Keith Olbermann says the waterboarding debate is over

After Chicago radio talker Mancow gives up after 6 seconds and calls waterboarding "absolute torture" Olbermann--the hard left's version of Rush Limbaugh--proclaims the debate is over.

Perhaps, but perhaps too you should know of a fact that Olbermann has left out when he said a detainee had been waterboard 142 times. According to the torture memos that the Obama administration unwisely released, "a single application of water may not last more than 40 seconds," and the number of individual applications of water lasting 10 seconds or longer may not exceed six."

There are other restrictions that Olbermann failed to mention, but I'd attribute that to ignorance based on the assumption that he did not read the memos. Or, if he had, deceit.

The length of time will not matter to some, arguing that for whatever length of time it takes, it's all waterboarding. That's fine. But Olbermann at least should tell the entire story.

Story in the Chicago Tribune

A Modest (abortion) Proposal

Dear President Obama,

You said at Notre Dame University that you want to find “common ground” in the abortion debate. Fine, so let’s put that commitment to the test and see if you would accept this compromise:

Just as the cessation of brain function is the generally accepted standard for determining when personhood ends, let’s apply the same logic to define when personhood begins.

So, as brain function begins and the fetus crosses the threshold into personhood, it would become endowed with the same legal and moral right to life that any person, at any stage of development or degree of dependence, would have. In other words, once the brain starts working, elective abortions would be barred. In medically necessary abortions, the rights of the mother and child would have to be balanced, meaning that after brain function begins, an abortion would be allowed only to save the mother’s life or protect her from serious harm.

This truly is a middle ground,...

Read full column in The Chiicago Daily Observer

Greenhouse gases drop, lowest in 19 years

You mean that Obama doesn't get credit for this?

Maybe they should have given Maureen Dowd's Pulitzer Prize to Josh Marshall

New York Times hard-left columnist steals words from blogger Josh Marshall. Can't come up with her own barbs to toss at former President George Bush, she admits she plagiarized the words verbatim from a friend who lifted them from Marshall. New York Times calls it an honest mistake.

Pathetic.

As the abortion debate turns

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

After electing the most extreme pro-choice president in history, more Americans now, for the first time, define themselves as pro-life.

How can that be?

Beats me. The easy explanation is that Americans are wising up to the pro-choice deceits. Gallup suggests that Americans may have come to realize just how extreme President Barack Obama is on matters of "reproductive rights." For example, as an Illinois state senator, Obama voted against protections for abortion victims born alive.

Let's just say that if I could explain why voters do what they do, I could tell you why Chicago and Illinois voters keep electing so many crooks and schlemiels. Returning to the poll, it finds that 51 percent of Americans consider themselves pro-life, compared with 42 percent pro-choice. That's a significant shift from a year ago, when half called themselves pro-choice and 44 percent pro-life. The shift is magnified by the fact that this is the first time since Gallup started asking the question in 1995 that a majority of Americans identify themselves as pro-life.

Dig deeper into the data, and it gets more interesting. In 1993, 34 percent agreed with pro-choice activists that abortion should be legal under all circumstances; only 12 percent took the opposite view, that abortion should never be legal. Now it's a virtual tie between the two "extreme" views, with 23 percent believing that abortion always should be legal and 22 percent that it never should be legal. Most Americans still say abortion should be legal "only under certain circumstances" (53 percent now, compared with the 61 percent high in 1996). The "circumstances" are not delineated, but this has to be a blow to pro-choice die-hards whose bizarre view is that any restrictions on abortion are "anti-choice" devices to "deny women the right to choose."

How else to explain their opposition to a partial-birth abortion ban, or requiring parental permission before an abortion can be performed on a minor of any age?

I guess what the poll shows is that pro-lifers aren't the oddballs that we're cracked up to be. It also is a pleasure to see pro-choicers squirm, after they have spent years in the comfort of their perceived majority. One commentator counseled that the poll, combined with the objections to the University of Notre Dame honoring Obama, constitutes some sort of incomprehensible "frenzy" against sexuality. Wow.

But could the political Obama White House be responding to this brand of "change"? The president already has reneged on a campaign promise to enact the Freedom of Choice Act, which would "guarantee the right to choose" if Roe vs. Wade and its companion Doe vs. Bolton U.S. Supreme Court decisions guaranteeing the right to abortion for virtually any reason were overturned.

Another test will come when Obama faces hard-left demands that Justice David Souter's replacement on the Supreme Court must be a pro-choice absolutist. Obama already has gone beyond the usual selection guidelines, creating an "empathy" litmus test.

But Americans don't agree. The prevailing (45 percent) view, according to Rasmussen Reports, is that legal background and competence come first. It will be fun to watch whether Democrats, who insisted there should be no litmus test on issues such as abortion when a Republican was doing the appointing, now will demand that the appointment be pro-choice.

Abortion and its related issues aren't the only matters that will be occupying the political side of Obama's brain. According to Rasmussen, Republicans and Democrats now are in a virtual tie when it comes to whom Americans trust more to handle the economy, only a rock-bottom 13 percent trust the Democratic Congress, few Americans are willing to pay higher taxes for health-care "reform" and the percentage of Americans who believe that human activity is driving global warming has "fallen dramatically.

Meanwhile, Democratic diversionary tactics to label the obnoxious radio host Rush Limbaugh or the sneering former Vice President Dick Cheney aren't working. Only 6 percent of GOP voters pick Limbaugh as their leader, and 4 percent name Cheney, according to Rasmussen.

Meanwhile, the hard left is sensing betrayal by Obama, who, among other things, adopted a GOP position by refusing to release the "torture" photos, as the American Civil Liberties Union demands. Maybe Obama's nascent shifts have nothing to do with "change" in public opinion. Maybe Obama now understands that the realities of governing aren't as simple as he told everyone. Let us hope so.

Dishonesty or ignorance from the Talker in Chief

During his Notre Dame commencement speech, President Barack Obama said this:

Those who speak out against stem cell research may be rooted in an admirable conviction about the sacredness of life, but so are the parents of a child with juvenile diabetes who are convinced that their son's or daughter's hardships can be relieved. [Emphasis added.]

I find it incredible and terribly frustrating that after all this debate over embryonic stem cell research that folks like Obama still paint its opponents as opposing stem cell research in general. I see it couched this way by journalists who should know better, on TV, in print and on the Web. They should know better.

Those of us who oppose embryonic stem cell research are, in fact, some of the most vocal supporters of stem cell research--the adult and umbilical cord blood kind. While embryonic stem cell research is still called the "gold standard" for all stem cell research, the fact is that it still remains promise, while adult and cord blood stem cells already are beyond the promise stage, but already producing cures.

This is the same kind of crap that people who oppose illegal immigration must put up with: politicians, journalists and commentators who paint its opponents as "anti-immigration." Have they totally eliminated logic from college and high school curricula? Do they not teach accuracy anymore in Journalism schools?

Keep Yucca Mountain project alive; stop screwing with Illinois

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

While President Barack Obama's newly proposed budget would finally allow Nevada to rid itself of a nuclear waste dump planned to be buried in tunnels deep under Yucca Mountain, it would leave Illinois with the shaft.

Obama's decision to zero out the Nevada nuclear waste repository is a betrayal of his Illinois constituents, forcing nuclear power plants here to continue to "temporarily" store more than 7,000 tons of dangerous, radioactive waste -- more than any other state -- in cooling ponds near rivers and Lake Michigan. It would mean that the $10 billion that Commonwealth Edison and other utility customers already have sunk into the repository have disappeared down a dark hole.

His decision also defies decades of scientific and engineering studies demonstrating that the Nevada site is the safest and best location to store the spent fuel. Now Illinois faces the prospect that the "temporary" storage of the dangerous materials here could turn into something a lot more permanent. There's no other way to put it: Obama caved in to Senate Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid, who for years has been trying to kill the project in his home state for purely political reasons. Reid, representing the worst of "not in my backyard" irrationality, last week crowed, "It's over with; Yucca Mountain is gone."

Now, the question becomes whether Illinois' Democratic senators -- Dick Durbin and Roland Burris -- will adequately represent the state's and nation's interests by fighting to keep the Yucca Mountain project alive. Ah, but you know they won't. There is a lesson in this for the gullible who thought that having a president and the Senate's second most powerful leader -- Durbin, the majority whip -- would shower their home state with copious benefits. Durbin, who loves to crow about the earmarks he brings back to Illinois, has badly failed the state in this most crucial test of his worth. The blindly partisan will argue that Obama has demonstrated courage by bucking the pressures from the provincials back home (i.e. Chicago), who simply are trying to avoid their responsibility by unloading on another state the waste they generated. After all, we'll be told, the Chicago area is among the most heavily dependent regions on nuclear power.

That would be a good argument if all the years of scientific study had concluded that the best alternative is to dispose of radioactive waste where it's generated. The evidence, however, suggests no such thing. The billions of dollars and years of study into the alternatives -- which included rocketing the waste into the sun or dumping it into the bottom of the ocean -- settled on Yucca Mountain in the desolate and lightly populated state of Nevada (about 18 people per square mile) as the most geologically and geographically secure prospect. Most of the nation's 131 temporary storage sites in 39 states are near large population centers; 161 million Americans live within 75 miles of a temporary site. Because nuclear power plants use large quantities of water, temporary storage often is near rivers, lakes and seacoasts, posing a threat of groundwater contamination. They also are more exposed to terrorist attacks. No site other than Yucca presented such promising natural and man-made barriers for isolating the waste for "tens of thousands of years."

The president, of course, was not simply responding to the parochial demands of Reid; Obama also is genuflecting to self-proclaimed protectors of the environment who wish to scare Americans into believing that their energy problems can be solved by windmills and such. In fact, nuclear power is an energy source of huge potential, one that generates no climate-changing carbon dioxide. Opposition to a permanent repository is an arrow in their quiver, allowing them to argue disingenuously that nuclear power is dangerous because there is no place to put the waste.

After taxpayers and electric utility customers have paid billions to study the matter, the president's $3.6 trillion 2010 fiscal year budget proposes to set aside $197 million for something called the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management to study "alternatives" to Yucca Mountain, including "regional" solutions. Billions wasted and almost $200 million conjured up from somewhere to reinvent the wheel. Pathetically, that draws barely a whimper from our Illinois elected officials.

This article has stirred some strong opinion on the Chicago Tribune website. If you want to read, or participate in the debate, go to the comment section at the bottom of the post (here).

Here are some informative links:
Reid’s victory on Yucca Mountain is nation’s loss

Is Yucca Mountain dead?

Notre Dame Students Do Themselves Proud

View their professional video of their objections to the Notre Dame administration deciding to confer an honorary degree on radically pro-choice President Barack Obama.

55% Say Media Try to Make Economy Seem Worse Than It Is

Here are some more poll results that may or may not explain why newspapers are in trouble:

The majority perception that the media isn't painting a straight picture of the economy matches similar Rasmussen Reports findings about global warming and political coverage. Earlier this month, 54% of voters said the news media makes global warming appear worse than it really is.

Just before last November's election, 68% of voters said most reporters try to help the candidate they want to win, and 51% believed they were trying to help Democrat Barack Obama.

Just seven percent (7%) thought they were trying to help his Republican opponent, John McCain. The number of those suspecting a tilt toward Obama had grown since June.

But while some liberal congressional Democrats would like to restore the so-called Fairness Doctrine because of their concern about the conservative tilt of talk radio, just 38% of voters think the government should require all radio stations to offer equal amounts of conservative and liberal political commentary. President Obama signaled several days ago that he opposes bringing back the Fairness Doctrine.

We paid for them, but we can't see them

The pictures of Air Force One taken on a photo op that scared the bejeebers out of New Yorkers cost taxpayers more than $300,000. Now Glib Gibbs, President Obama's spokesman, says we can't see them because he "doesn't know where they are."

Well, find them Gibbs; that's your job. And so many thought that Obama being from Chicago didn't much matter. Here's news: stiffing the public is standard operating procedure in the land of Daley.

Some details are here: The Swamp

Here's how they might look:

The Labor Cartel Vs. The Rest of The Country

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Daily Observer

For all the great good that organized labor has done for America and Americans, it now has become one of Chicago’s and the nation’s great handicaps.

The unions are snuffing out jobs, denying children a decent education and bludgeoning taxpayers for more than their labors are worth, among other things, all the while justifying their selfishness in obsolete 19th century rhetoric.

In Chicago, their mercenary practices are again denying poverty stricken communities and low-income families of a chance for hundreds of jobs, a decent place to shop and neighborhood revitalization. Chicago’s organized labor cartel, repeating a scenario from a few years back, is gearing up to block a Wal-Mart “superstore” at an abandoned Ryerson Steel plant site in Chatham.

Read more in The Chicago Daily Observer

L.A. Unified pays teachers not to teach - Los Angeles Times

The paycheck arrives regularly, as his contract requires. Read it in the Los Angeles Times

The fantasy of high-speed rail

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

How much would you pay to get to Milwaukee 10 minutes faster?

Not a cent, you say? Nothing against Milwaukee; it's a lovely town. But, if President Barack Obama gets his way, the Milwaukee-in-a-flash dream could cost taxpayers hundreds of millions. His vision of a network of high-speed trains -- many fanning out from Chicago to Milwaukee and elsewhere -- would cost $8 billion. Actually, that's just the start. The eventual cost to taxpayers of creating a network of trains zipping across America at rocket-train speeds would be way, way more.

Some visionaries (and government contractors) would argue that realizing the promise of high-speed rail travel is worth the cost. Ray LaHood, U.S. transportation secretary and former Illinois Republican congressmen, said in a new report, "A Vision for High- Speed Rail in America," that they included "building a robust, green economy, gaining energy independence, reversing global climate change and fostering more livable, connected communities."

That's quite a promise. But before building the gravy train to nirvana, some questions are in order, starting with, is it worth it? Federal regulations require that projects meet a cost-benefit test.

The costs? Well, we're talking about "high-speed" trains that would go up to 110 m.p.h, instead of the standard 79 m.p.h. speed limit on most passenger train service. That's far short of the 200-m.p.h-plus that most people think of when they're talking about bullet trains. Achieving the higher speeds would require the construction of entirely separate rights-of-way to avoid conflicts with Metra commuter trains. Every place the high-speed line would cross a street or highway, an expensive viaduct or underpass would have to be built. Less expensive street-level grade crossings would be unthinkable. Costs would skyrocket way beyond $8 billion.

Then there's the cost of separating the high-speed trains from the area's crisscrossing and clogged freight lines. In Chicago, that's been an eternal conflict, only now being addressed with a joint public and private improvement program costing in excess of $1 billion. And that's not even figuring in the new high-speed service.

In addition, expect intense local opposition from people who don't want 110-m.p.h. trains roaring through their communities. Think about the 1995 accident when a Metra commuter train going 70 m.p.h. rammed a school bus at a Fox River Grove grade crossing, killing seven children. The environment and social impact on communities bisected by any new high-speed lines would be substantial and controversial.

The benefits? Will the time saved in travel be sufficient to lure enough travelers out of their cars in trips between Chicago; Milwaukee; Madison, Wis.; St. Louis; Indianapolis; and Detroit? Proving that and other benefits requires rigid, independent analysis, and certainly more than the rosy projections of rail fans, greenies and romantics. Already, I've run across two student studies that challenge the cost and benefit assumptions of a couple of high-speed segments. If students can find the problem, I can hardly wait to see what independent professionals say.

I've enjoyed high-speed rail in France, and I believe it would be a joy here too. But France isn't the Midwest, where distances between major cities are greater and population densities lower. High-speed rail for years has been stuck at the awe-gee, wouldn't-it-be-great stage. Based on little more than that, columnists are rhapsodizing over the idea and public officials in the proposed high-speed corridors are dreaming of train loads of federal largesse. High-speed rail is one of those popular notions that's hard to oppose, positioning anyone who questions the practicality of it as an old buzzard who recoils from all the possibilities that life has to offer.

Well, here's a possibility, and I think a better one for the money. The Federal Transit Administration recently released a study estimating that bringing the CTA and major rail transit systems in six cities into good repair would cost $50 billion, and another $5.9 billion year to maintain them. Between spending more money for faster, safer and better rides for the many more who ride CTA trains, or cutting 10 or even 30 minutes off a trip between Chicago and Milwaukee, I don't think there should be any debate about where the money goes. Unless, of course, you think -- as many do these days -- that those cherry blossoms along the Washington tidal basin will ripen into endless harvests of money.

More comments can be seen and posted at the Chicago Tribune

Why shouldn't congressmen be subject to the same laws as we are?

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi thinks congressmen are special. Read here to find out why.

A jury can acquit you, but...

a judge still can send you to jail. Read here about the "acquitted conduct" debate.

Congress knew.

This exclusive story confirms that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other congressional leaders knew about waterboarding, but didn't speak up.

This fact suggests that the leaders (including those on the intelligence committees) knew what the results of interrogations achieved, if anything. Is former Vice President Dick Cheney right when he claims that other memos show they were productive? Pelosi et al, if they're honest, can help clear this up.

But they won't, because it won't serve their partisan needs.

And why won't Pelosi tell her colleagues in the House? (See the video.)

"Mistakes were made."

It has become a cliche, but whenever politicians are caught in a blunder, they can be counted on to revert to the passive voice. That's to avoid saying, "So, I made the mistake." Or: "The mistake was mine." Or to suggest that someone else made the mistake.

So how did Obama's Homeland Security boss Janet Napolitano respond when she was asked about the goofy Air Force One flyover of Ground Zero? Here is the text:

NAPOLITANO: My understanding is the FAA sanctioned that, but I share that concern. I don't know how that happened and we want to get to the bottom of that. You know, mistakes were made. Mistakes shouldn't be repeated.

Cost of the Air Force One fiasco: $325,000

According to the Associate Press. View here.

Government, organized labor to run the Auto Industry

How scary is that?

By Dennis Byrne
Real Clear Politics

As the future of the domestic auto industry became clearer Tuesday, it appears that an unprecedented government and organized labor partnership would end up running the companies, and if that doesn't give you pause, nothing will.

Under proposed and tentative agreements, the government (meaning us taxpayers) would own half of General Motors and an undetermined slice of a 10 percent stake in Chrysler. In addition, the United Auto Workers Union would own 55 percent of Chrysler and 39 percent of GM.

There's some poetic justice in the possibility that organized labor, which had so much to do with the failure of the domestic auto industry, could end up holding so much of the bag for the mess it helped create. But how is it that we taxpayers now would have a share of two worthless companies that months ago should have gone into bankruptcy? The not-so-funny irony....

Read the rest in RealClearPolitics.

Bush didn't do it.

The East Coast, media and political classes are in the habit of blaming President George W. Bush for everything bad. But if something good has happened, Bush can't be in any way credited for it.

The latest example comes from Tom Friedman, a New York Times columnist who perfectly mirrors this sanctimonious know-it-all attitude.

Here he explains why we've had no more 9-11s during the Bush administration:

I believe that the most important reason there has not been another 9/11, besides the improved security and intelligence, is that Al Qaeda is primarily focused on defeating America in the heart of the Arab-Muslim world — particularly in Iraq. Al Qaeda knows that if it can destroy the U.S. effort (still a long shot) to build a decent, modernizing society in Iraq, it will undermine every U.S. ally in the region.

Sigh. Don't they ever get tired of writing the same thing, over and over again?

And speaking of trying to destroy "the U.S. [longshot] effort to build a decent, moderning society in Iraq," no one has tried harder than the East Coast, media and political classes.