Hugh Hewitt's Blog
It turns out that 14 Senators voted against the Healthy Forests Initiative, including Vermont's Patrick Leahy, who called it a "camouflaged attempt" to limit access to the courts. I think Californians and other Westerners who have suffered from the fires ought to keep Leahy's and his colleagues' obstructionism in mind throughout this election cycle. Visit the National Republican Senatorial Committee and send in a donation to thank Mr. Leahy for his stance in the aftermath of fires that have swept three-quarters of a million acres of land in Southern California. And read "Up in Smoke" to remind you about the wisdom of these ideologues: Nothing they planned on happened. The habitats they sought to preserve are burned. The species they sought to protect are dead in vast numbers.
At times it seems like the Democrats really do have a political death wish. Read Bill Sammon and James G. Lakely in today's Washington Times: "Democrats won't give Bush credit for gains." A political party cannot treat the public as idiots year-in and year-out and expect to be rewarded with the public's confidence and votes, especially in a time of war. They pretend there is no war, just as Leahy and his 13 colleagues pretend that there are no fires, and just as the entire Washington leadership of the Dems pretends that there is no economic growth. "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain," was funny in Oz, but it is not a platform for a once great national party.
Anyone who is concerned about the extremism of Leahy and the other 13 members of the "Let it Burn" lobby should realize that they have to support Republican incumbents like Lisa Murkowski in Alaska and Republican challengers like Jim DeMint in South Carolina. Voting for a Democrat in any Senate race is voting to put Leahy back in charge of the Senate Judiciary Committee where his bizarre views impact more than the judicial selection process --they also mold forest policy.
The New York Times reports on the rise of Michael Howard, who would be the first Jew since Disraeli to lead the Tories. With that fact in mind, and the critics who dogged Dizzy his entire career, I was struck by this line in the Alan Cowell article: "[Howard] has also been depicted by his critics as somehow sinister and shady, dogged by a remark by a onetime aide who said there was 'something of the night' about him."
It was Gladstone who roamed London chatting up the prostitutes, not Disraeli, but Disraeli got the reputation for mysterious in his day. It is an all-encompassing smear, allowing the speaker to invite his audience to think whatever they will about the subject, and not really the sort of remark that should be allowed to pass unchallenged in an age of rising anti-Semitism.
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