Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, whose decision not to seek a third term as governor sparked immense speculation among Republicans about a 2012 campaign, announced today he will launch the “Freedom First” PAC in early November, granting him the opportunity to curry favor among the party faithful by raising and transferring sums of money to state and federal Republican candidates.

After launching a website last week describing Pawlenty as “extreme,” the Democratic National Committee today characterized the potential 2012 contender as a “part-time Governor” after news surfaced he was to launch a political action committee.

“Tim Pawlenty is quickly becoming the definition of ’say one thing and do another’. Today’s news about Pawlenty starting a political action committee is just the latest in a series of broken pledges by the Governor - first breaking his pledge to not raise taxes on the people of Minnesota, and now breaking his pledge to finish his term ‘strong’ as Governor,” said DNC spokesman Hari Sevugan.

“This is just more evidence that Pawlenty is, at best, a part-time Governor who cares more about his national political ambitions than the people of Minnesota,” he said in an email to reporters this afternoon.

While the formation of PACs are indeed a signature of budding presidential campaigns, Democrats have not always been of the opinion they somehow represent a “broken pledge” or a dereliction of duty, as one political advisor close to Pawlenty noted.

Then-Senator Hillary Clinton filed a statement of organization for her leadership PAC, “HILLPAC,” on January 5, 2001, spending eight years as a “part-time” Senator before leaving her post in 2009.

On June 25, 2005, then-Senator Barack Obama announced the formation of “Hope Fund,” whose donations to politicians in key 2008 primary states raised questions of legality on the level of coordination between the PAC and the Obama campaign.

And four days after the official formation of Obama’s “Hope Fund” PAC, then-Senator Joe Biden filed a statement of organization with the FEC for his “Unite our States” PAC, in anticipation of his campaign for president in 2008.

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Marty Peretz of the New Republic is usually a thoughtful liberal.  I enjoy the New Republic.  That’s why I was rather stunned by this article.

Some parents don’t like the idea of the President beeming his image into every school in the country on Tuesday.  I think a lot of people have gotten carried away with criticizing the president on this, but I’ll admit that I dislike it, too.  I dislike it not because the President’s speech is too political, but because it is not political.  As I note here, the President really has  nothing to say about government policy.  Here’s the speech in a nutshell:  “Welcome back to school.  Stay in school, work hard.”  

My kids don’t need to hear that from the President.  This is a President who once again shows that he has no idea of the proper role of government.  If the President wants to talk about governmental affairs, great.  I’d love for him to stop by our school to do so.  That would be a great experience for the kids.  But I do not want the President trying to raise my children.  When people ask, “how can you object to the President urging kids to stay in school,” I ask them what they’d think if I stopped by their house one night, uninvited, to tell their kids how to behave.

But Marty Peretz takes the cake.  You know what Peretz thinks?  He writes, ”it is almost disloyal to refuse any children the right to hear him.  Disloyal and nutty.”  Well gee, Martin, thanks for the “almost,” at least on the first try.  

Where’s Hillary when you need her?

Call the members of the House and Senate foreign relations committees. Urge that they support Roberto Micheletti and the actions of the Honduran Supreme Court and Congress.

Go here to find the phone numbers.

Note: you’ll only see your Congressman or Senator IF they serve on the relevant committees.

Former Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, in defiance of the Honduran Supreme Court and Congress, attempted to hold an unconstitutional referendum to set himself up as President for life.

His move was backed by Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, and Barack Obama.

The democratic institutions of Honduras ordered the Honduran military to arrest Zelaya and named Robert Micheletti as President of Honduras.

Zelaya tried to make himself a dictator. Barack Obama has sided with American enemies against the lawfully elected government of Honduras.

Call the members of the House and Senate foreign relations committees. Urge that they support Roberto Micheletti and the actions of the Honduran Supreme Court and Congress.

Some attention was paid to the fact that the newest social networking website, Twitter, had decided to push off its scheduled maintenance Tuesday morning as the situation in Iran became steadily more embroiled in conflict. As it happened, Twitter was a major source of information coming out of that repressed society as news was happening. Twitter had, though, scheduled a few hours down time just when Iran was at a peak of activity. So, in order to keep the flow of communication to the outside world flowing, Twitter announced it would not turn off its service until Iran calmed down.

This is pretty interesting news, that a mere social networking site was so deeply involved in momentous news of the day and that it became so relied upon by people hungry for news and interested in discussing a major democratic movement is definitely a new thing. It is especially interesting because the U.S. media so badly fell down on its job of reporting activities in Iran making Twitter a vital tool for communication. But what was even more interesting was that Obama’s State Department tried to claim credit for Twitter’s decision to stay in operation during the day.

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Hillary Clinton invited a controversial Muslim from Virginia, Esam Omeish, to participate in a conference call of Muslim leaders last week following President Obama’s call to reach out to Muslims in Cairo, Egypt. Omeish made headlines after it was discovered that he told a crowd at a pro-Palestinian rally in 2000 that “the jihad way is the way to liberate your land.”

So how did this radical Muslim end up as a member of Hillary Clinton’s outreach effort to loyal American Muslims? Is this just another example of the poor vetting process that goes on in the Obama administration? Did Hillary even know this man’s background before she invited him to participate in this conference call? Did she know this man’s outrageous Jihadist tendencies before her office contacted him?

In 2000 Esam Omeish urged people to support the Palestinian liberation movement.

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Last week, I led a group of Republican senators that wrote to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urging her to immediately relist North Korea as a State Sponsor of Terrorism and we also introduced an amendment to force the Obama Administration into action.
 
Yesterday on ABC’s This Week, I was pleased to hear Secretary Clinton’s response that they are now considering relisting North Korea. This is a very important step that I hope President Obama will agree to.
 
However, just days before Secretary Clinton’s statement, her spokesman bluntly claimed the State Department doesn’t believe there are any recent acts by North Korea that can be defined as supporting terrorism:
 

REPORTER: A group of Republican senators has written a letter to the Secretary urging her to relist North Korea on the terror list. They specify certain unnamed ongoing terrorist activities. Do you share that assessment, and where do you want to go with that?

STATE DEPT. SPOKESMAN PHILIP CROWLEY: …As for North Korea, I think we’re aware of that letter. But as far as I know, firing off missiles and over-heated rhetoric is unwise and unhelpful, but does not meet the legal definition of terrorism.

REPORTER: They seem to say – but they don’t refer to those tests as a terrorist activity – to say that other ones are ongoing, that those are — Is there anything else that you’re aware of?

MR. CROWLEY: To list a country on the terrorism list, there’s a legal requirement there. And what we’ve seen so far, I don’t think meets that legal test.
 

Based on this statement, I eagerly await the State Department to certify:
 

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Caption this.

That’s Hillary. Mrs. Clinton if you’re nasty.

Yesterday, in what is the latest in a long, hard series of bungles by the White House, reporters who called for an “on-the-record briefing call with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton” were offered the opportunity to provide a credit card if they felt like “getting nasty.”

According to Fox News, the White House distributed an email to the press announcing a conference call, but included the number for a phone sex line rather than the conference call number. Asked for comment White House Press Secretary Bill Burton said the mistake was “one of the stupider things FOX News has covered lately.” I couldn’t agree more Bill, it is one of the stupid things Obama’s administration has done lately and that the press has subsequently covered or, as in this case, not covered.

This may sound cliché at this point, but fantasize with me for moment. Imagine that this conference call had been scheduled for Condi Rice. Are you there with me, baby? You’re calling for Condi and you get Candi? The press would have gone NUTS. Bush would have been bound, gagged, and whipped for it over the course of days. It would have been a press orgy and, what’s more, the one-time thing would have come back to haunt the Bush team for years after. Every time they sent out a press release about Condi … oh, they’d stick with their own phone numbers, sure. But everyone would remember the other number. From that one time. It would be awkward.

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Thus far, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has made two diplomatic blunders during her visit to Mexico that the U.S. Old Media are shockingly uninterested in highlighting. One was a policy blunder and the other a cultural/religious one.

Clinton’s first mistake was in imagining she is still a Senator that can make pronouncements on pending laws and policy plans instead of a mere envoy of the president, a mouth piece that hasn’t the same freedom to invent policy prescriptions and laws that a Senator does. Last week, Clinton told Mexican officials that “we” — as in the U.S. government — are considering re-upping the so-called assault rifle ban because Mexico’s drug violence is “our” fault.

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The irony of Hillary Clinton saying that. The article cracks me up in general.

The image of Our Lady of Guadalupe was miraculously imprinted by Mary on the tilma, or cloak, of St. Juan Diego in 1531. The image has numerous unexplainable phenomena, such as the appearance on Mary’s eyes of those present in the room when the tilma was opened and the image’s lack of decay. . . .

After observing it for a while, Mrs. Clinton asked “who painted it?” to which Msgr. Monroy responded “God!”

Meanwhile, Bill is thinking he wants to pay a visit after Hillary’s assessment that the virgin is marvelous.

There’s trouble south of the Rio Grande.

In 2006, Mexico elected a bright, conservative reformer as President. Felipe Calderon has attempted to open Mexico’s flagging energy sector to private investment, fight government corruption, and crack down on the illegal drug trade. He’s making some progress (albeit less than the U.S. would like) and it’s coming at a significant cost.

Throughout these efforts, President Calderon had previously been able to count on the support of the White House as he pushed for an agenda that would ultimately benefit the U.S. When Barack Obama was elected, the situation changed - most notably because Obama favored renegotiating NAFTA, which Calderon had opposed. Nevertheless, Calderon agreed to negotiate - most likely because Mexico could pursue a guest worker program as part of any deal, and could push for more favorable treatment of its exports to the U.S.

In just the last few days however, the US-Mexico relationship has taken some serious blows. Things have deteriorated so badly and so quickly, that President Calderon has accused the U.S. of perpetrating ‘a campaign against Mexico:’

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On top of the major faux pas in gifting promulgated by the Obamas during the visit of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown comes the story of the ridiculous mistake that Secretary of State Hillary “the linguist” Clinton made with her gift to Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov.

The “gift” was supposed to be a funny one, but it was a misfire because it seems that Clinton couldn’t find anyone in the employ of the State Department that had a grasp of the Russian language. The U.S. media has not made too big a deal about this one but the Russian and British media has been playing this one to the hilt. It’s being called the “Button Gaffe” and it certainly is making our Sec. of State look stupid to the world.

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Administration officials confirmed late last night that the U.S. will assist the United Nations in planning and executing the fourth edition of the UNESCO-sponsored “World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance.”

President Obama has yet to announce whether or not the U.S. will attend the conference, to be held in Geneva, Switzerland this year. Senior administration officials, including UN ambassador Susan Rice and national security council member Samantha Power, have reportedly been working to convince Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to commit the U.S. to the conference — an act which would reverse the Bush administration policy of boycotting future editions of the conference pending ironclad assurances that it would not be a repeat of the 2001 meeting which the U.S. and Israel walked out of due to the virulently anti-Semitic and anti-Israel tone of the proceedings and the conference’s official resolutions.

In 2001 in Durban, South Africa, the nations in attendance used the opportunity of the U.N.-sponsored conference to slander Israel and propose the adoption of United Nations resolutions declaring Zionism (the belief that a Jewish state of Israel should exist) to be the international legal equivalent of racism (in an ironic move, African countries like Nigeria and Zimbabwe, which are knee-deep in the slave trade, sought to pry a formal apology for slavery from the Caucasian West, as well).

Further, the NGO Forum held at the 2001 conference (for the purpose of “creating a worldwide anti-racism movement” and “to struggle against intolerance”) saw resolution language like the following proposed:

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During his Presidential campaign, Barack Obama famously promised direct diplomacy with Iran, going as far as to say he will meet Iranian leaders without preconditions of any kind. Even as Iranian-funded and -armed forces in Iraq were bombing civilians and shooting at American troops, he promised to meet with their leaders. We’re not at war with Eurasia, and absolutely should not start one.

As he told NPR:

Oh, we have to deal with the role of Iran. The question is whether we deal with Iran through saber-rattling, or whether we deal with Iran by direct diplomatic engagement. The key for us is to engage in the sort of direct talks that we engaged in, by the way, when Iran cooperated with us in dealing with the Taliban in Afghanistan. It’s that sort of direct engagement that this president has been unwilling to do, but under an Obama administration would be, I think a top priority.

It’s all just words, of course, because the statements made by Secretary Clinton make it clear that Obama sees no chance of success for this plan against Iran’s nuclear program.

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For all the stories that have come out in the last month about how President Obama has executed the smoothest administrative transition in memory, and how Obama has chosen to enforce the “strictest ethics rules ever applied” to the administration vetting and recruitment process, the facts sure do seem to point to an altogether different conclusion — especially in terms of cabinet nominees and senior staff.

Let’s take a quick look at a few members of the crack team Obama has tried to surround himself with since being elected President three months ago.

• Bill Richardson: Nominated to be Obama’s Secretary of Commerce; withdrew when it became public that he was “being investigated by a federal grand jury in his home state for…steering state bond business from the New Mexico Financial Authority toward…a significant campaign contributor.”
• Tim Geithner: Obama’s nominee for Treasury Secretary (and head of the IRS) failed to pay owed payroll taxes for several years, despite accepting reimbursement from the IMF for those taxes and signing certifications that he had paid them.
• Tom Daschle: Obama’s nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services owed nearly $102,000 in taxes “on the car and driver a wealthy friend let him use from 2005 through 2007″ and neglected to “report $83,333 in consulting income in 2007.”
• Leon Panetta: The only experience Obama’s choice to be Director of Central Intelligence during the War on Terror and multiple international crises had with the CIA was fighting battles against the leadership and attempting to slash its budget while a staffer in the Clinton White House.
• William Lynn: Within hours of declaring his new no-lobbyists rule, Obama made an exception for Lynn, a lobbyist for the 3rd largest defense contractor in the nation and now an Obama nominee for Deputy Secretary of Defense
• Hillary Clinton: While a Senator, Obama’s nominee for Secretary of State “intervened at least six times in government issues directly affecting companies and others that later contributed to her husband’s foundation.
• Lobbyists of the World, Unite!: Despite repeatedly promising during his campaign that lobbyists would not be welcome in his administration, Obama bent his own new rules and hired over a dozen lobbyists to fill senior staff positions.

The absurd attacks by leftists (and by “conservative” poseurs) on John McCain for his choice of Sarah Palin as running mate, and the supposed incompetence of his vetting staff that selection displayed, look very hollow indeed when measured up against the apparent lack of any vetting whatsoever President Obama’s nominees for half a dozen cabinet positions (and countless more senior staff jobs).

Between the lack of vetting, the memory-holing of vital documents posted on WhiteHouse.gov during the Bush years (like, for example, the Status of Forces Agreement between the U.S. and Iraq, which is now only available via html cache), and Obama’s repeated violation of his own “ethics” rules for the purpose of filling his cabinet and senior staff rosters, the title “smoothest transition in history” appears to be almost exactly the opposite of what this incoming administration’s actions over the last few months deserve.

In fact, the only parts of this transition that have gone smoothly are the parts President Bush handled himself.

Now that should be a scary thought for all those liberals who proclaimed January 20, 2009 to be the day “competence” returned to the White House, shouldn’t it?

Apparently Representative Carolyn Maloney appeared on MSNBC this morning to discuss Caroline Kennedy’s withdrawal from consideration for Hillary Clinton’s vacant Senate seat. She made a surprising argument:

Representative Carolyn Maloney – a Senate hopeful – appeared on MSNBC this morning and tried extrapolating a political lesson from the airplane crash in the Hudson.

“We did have one good news with the tragedy with the U.S. airplane landing, and many of us were very pleased that Captain Sullenberger was a really experienced captain that brought that plane down safely and saved so many lives,” she said.

Maloney added, “We certainly didn’t need a pilot with a manual [and] on-the-job training, and we can’t have that now…”

“I support her for putting family first,” Maloney said. Before leaving, Maloney said, “We need someone who is up to date and ready to go, and I’m in that category.”

Doesn’t Maloney know that experience doesn’t matter anymore — and that judgment is what’s really needed? If experience was as important in governing as it is in flying planes, then the nation would not have elected a neophyte to the White House, and that neophyte would not have entrusted a budgeting expert with leadership of the CIA, or an economist with no business experience with the Treasury Department, or a defender of terrorists with Department of Justice.

I wonder if Maloney has any sense of just how out-of-fashion experience is with the current government.

I somehow suspect that Pravda didn’t really want me to get the reaction that I did from reading this:

Hillary Clinton as the US Secretary of State will not change anything. The color of the skin does not change the essence of aggressive politics. She definitely enjoys great respect in the United States as a woman who returned to big politics after the infamous scandal with her husband. Unlike Condoleezza Rice, Clinton has a more subtle perception of the moment. She realizes that life is not based on the American dream but follows a completely different motto: “We either swim or drown.”

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So says the incoming Second Lady:

Joe Biden’s wife said Monday that he had his pick of being Barack Obama’s running mate or the secretary of state nomination that eventually went to Hillary Rodham Clinton, a slip that the vice president-elect immediately tried to shush.

Jill Biden’s comment came during an appearance with her husband on “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” taped at Washington’s Kennedy Center on the eve of the inauguration.

“Joe had the choice to be secretary of state or vice president,” she said. Her husband turned to his wife with his finger to his lips and a “Shhhh!” that sent the audience into laughter. “OK, he did,” Jill Biden said in her defense.

The vice president-elect blushed, grimaced and gave his wife a hug while the audience continued to erupt in laughter. “That’s right,” he finally said to his wife. “Go ahead.”

The incoming Vice-President’s office sent out a statement contending, essentially, that Jill Biden is at best an exaggerator and at worst, an outright liar and that Barack Obama only offered Joe Biden one job. Doubtless, the Ceti eels have been placed inside Jill Biden’s ears, ensuring that she sticks to the script from now on.