Once again, we see the truth take a back seat to the best spin by Democrats. NRO’s The Corner blog has an exclusive report on the supposed “180 waterboardings” that the US government conducted on terror suspects and it appears that the truth is a bit different than the spin.

You see, it seems that there weren’t “180 waterboardings” but were instead 180 “pours.” In other words, water was poured on the suspects 180 times. Further, the rules were quite specific. No more than two sessions could be conducted on any suspect within a 24 hour period and no more than 6 “pours” of water were allowed per session.

This means that instead of 180 sessions on the waterboard there was a much lower 30.

But, as Cliff May notes on The Corner blog, all the carefully crafted rules for how to conduct waterboard interrogations reveals a far different situation than the Torquemada-like, torture loving Bush administration that critics are trying to advance.

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I will admit it. I am a subscriber to the Claremont Review of Books. Whatever you make of that, don’t imagine that I am one of those pointy-headed, University types that sit about in tweed jackets with leather elbow patches, drawing on a pipe, and pontificating about the Greek Classics. On the other hand, I ain’t no anti-intellectual neither. Just consider me one of those fellows that knows just enough to be dangerous.

In any case, one thing that always strikes me about The CRB is that I always find at least one article that proves to me that while eggheads might make for wonderful support for policy, that they may be ideal for an intellectual underpinning of ideas, they would be horrible implementers of it should they be the ones in charge– yes even those ostensibly on our own side of the issues. As it happens, the Winter issue of the CRB did not disappoint me in this area.

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Back in 2007, lefty comedian Jon Stewart mercilessly mocked lefty talk show host Chris Matthews over the title of his book when Matthews appeared to flog the tome on Stewart’s The Daily Show. The ribbing was so unexpected and so mean spirited that Matthews later said it was a “book interview from hell.”

Now Matthews is releasing the book in paperback but amazingly there is a tiny difference between this version of the book and the original. The pulper was originally titled, “Life’s a Campaign: What Politics Has Taught Me About Friendship, Rivalry, Reputation, and Success.” But now, all of a sudden the paperback version of this thing is heading to stores as, “The Hardball Handbook: How to Win at Life.”

So, what gives? Is Matthews afraid of Stewart’s renewed attack on his book? Did Matthews change the book’s title for fear of a comedian?

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Obama was supposed to have energized “the youth” of this country like no other presidential candidate ever. We were assured that with Obama as president we’d see a revitalization of “the youth” that would respond by streaming to volunteer for public service. And, in expectation of this avalanche of volunteers, and in build-it-they-will-come mode, Obama had passed through Congress his brown-shirt-like Serve America Act that pumped some $6 billion of our tax money into an upgraded national and community service program.

But the youth have failed him. According to Peter Levine, director of Tufts University’s Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning & Engagement (CIRCLE) youth volunteering has dropped for the first time sine 9/11.

Of course, I am making light of the situation, here, admittedly. But, let’s look at something that goes against the Obama line of mythology as far as his real support among America’s youth goes. Let’s face it, it isn’t just Obama. The vaunted youth vote has been in steady decline since 18-year-olds were given the vote by a mistaken act of Congress in 1972.

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Apparently Ross Douthat’s buddy Reihan Salam doesn’t like former VP Dick Cheney. Salam’s recent TheDailyBeast.com column calls Cheney “America’s surliest pundit,” and moans that the ex-vp hasn’t “graciously kept his mouth shut” in retirement like Bush has. Like many of these circular firing squad leaders (think Douthat, Kathleen Parker, the McCain clan or David Frum) Salam is far more interested in shooting at folks on his own side than in trying to move ahead for the future of the conservative movement. It’s obviously some sick bid to be “liked” by the Old Media establishment.

Salam charges that Cheney is too busy “mugging for the camera” and attacking Obama with his “macho snarl” to see that he should just go away. Blah, blah, blah, and such and so forth. In truth, Salam offers nothing worth debating and nearly everything he says in this screed is simply erroneous, so I won’t bother with his self-hating blather against Cheney whose information is a must hear for any conservative looking to see where Obama is going wrong on homeland security and foreign policy.

But, the one issue that moves me to discuss Salam’s carping is simply this: why should a former president or vice-president go off into the night never to talk in public again? Even more to the point, how often has it happened, anyway?

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Yael T. Abouhalkah is all excited to let the readers of the Kansas City Star know that he’s found another Republican politician that has had to grovel at the feet of Rush Limbaugh, apologizing to the radio giant for a slight cast his way. And to “prove” it Abouhalkah used a press release from the Democratic National Campaign Committee that said so. Yeah, nice unbiased source there, Abouhalkah.

Seriously, does Abouhalkah imagine that a Democrat Party press release is an unbiased source about what is happening between a Republican lawmaker and Rush Limbaugh? No wonder newspapers are falling on such tough times. If Abouhalkah is any indication, the definition of common words aren’t even any longer understood in the Star’s newsroom. Words like “source,” “unbiased,” “legitimate,” and “veracity” seem to be foreign to the folks at the Star. With such a failure to understand the very basics of journalism, its no wonder readers are abandoning newspapers in droves.

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On April 22, the Associated Press published a short report about the fact that the Department of Homeland Security has decided to stop paying for employee subscriptions to newspapers and magazines “to save money.”

Upon reading this, some may initially shake their heads in hearty agreement and congratulate Obama’s DHS for trying to save money. I, on the other hand, see this as a perfect example of a typical waste of the taxpayer’s money, though one finally rectified.

After all, what does this cancellation of subscriptions mean? It means government employees were getting FREE personal subscriptions to their favorite entertainment publications… well, free to themselves, anyway. We must realize that we the people have been saddled with the bill all along for who knows how many thousands of magazine and newspaper subscriptions for who knows how many years?

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The New York Times is attempting to spin gold from straw, telling us unicorns are real, expecting the Tooth Fairy to bring a windfall. At least, that is what it seems if we are to believe the Times’ fantasy card check union story from April 20. You see, the Times believes that an overwhelming anti-union vote held via secret ballot is proof that card check is necessary.

This pretzel logic insists that the employer in question was so underhanded that even a secret ballot was corrupted by the efforts by the employer to scare off employees from supporting the union. But, here is the thing that makes no sense: if the ballot is secret, since no employee’s name was connected to the vote, and if the employer was that mean to the workers, WHY did they still vote against the union?

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Gun sales surge after Obama’s election

Chávez gift to Obama shoots book to No. 2 on Amazon.com

Proving the old adage that instead of sitting quietly letting everyone think you are an idiot one should speak up and prove it, funnyman John Cleese and Kung Fu action star Jackie Chan recently did some talking that they should probably have avoided. Apparently unaware that they’ve left office, Cleese unloaded on George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and seemed to say U.S. Marines weren’t very sophisticated at a recent visit to Cornell University. For his part, Jackie Chan announced to the world that Chinese people “needed controlling” because all that darn democracy is just too “chaotic” for them. One wonders where Jackie thinks all his many millions of dollars have come from: communism or democracy?

Chan’s comments were so ridiculous that even the communist Chinese government thought they were foolish enough to denounce in the Chinese press.

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Congressional Quarterly has a short piece on team Obama’s sudden revisiting of three free trade agreements that have been languishing in Congress for quite some time, all three efforts that the Bush Administration began but was unable to settle.

One is a trade agreement with South Korea, the second is a Panama trade agreement and the third the Colombia Free Trade pact. It is the later that I find the most interesting and the most hopeful.

I find it interesting because the Democrats have been adamantly against this agreement with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe for several years now. The Democrats base their claim against supporting the agreement upon the long, bleak history of government violence against union organizers there.

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I will begin this right at the top by saying that I don’t care a whit if the appointment of any American official brings hope to Egyptians. After all, an American official should be concerned with America’s interests not Egypt’s. Not that I am saying that American officials or appointments should necessarily have as a chief criteria for appointment an interest in the denigration of any foreign land, but that what’s good for America should be any new official’s chief concern.

However, apparently the L.A. Times thinks that it is germane to U.S. interests that Egyptians are “rejoicing” that President Obama has appointed a female American Muslim to his administration. In, “Muslim woman’s appointment as Obama advisor draws cautious optimism” from April 22, Noha El-Hennawy is reporting from Cairo that Egyptians are happy with Obama’s purported outreach to Muslims.

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One of the more objectionable features of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) is the card check feature wherein a union can simply gather publicly signed cards by employees agreeing to become unionized, thereby eliminating the secret vote for the workers. Opponents say this process is ripe for union abuse leaving workers open to any sort of intimidation and quashing their vote of conscience.

If any more evidence of how corrupt the card check system could be were needed, one need only look at a recent union organizer in Ohio to see the abuse that will happen with card check.

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The folks at The Hill alerted me to the fact that the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) have decided to oppose any reinstitution of the inaptly named Fairness Doctrine. I know, imagine that… as lefty a group as the SPJ actually agreeing with conservatives that the Fairness Doctrine is an abomination of our Constitutional right to free political speech! You can knock me over with a feather, and all.

The Hill is right to quip that this makes for strange bedfellows, but it would seem like a no-brainer for anyone interested in Constitutional rights and a jealous protection of free speech no matter whose it is.

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In May of 2008 when Barack Obama was running for president he made a stop in Miami, Florida, a place well known for being a hotbed of anti-Castro, anti-communist sentiment. Miami is a place where many thousands of self-exiled Cubans settled after they fled a life of religious and political oppression and torture at the hands of Cuban communist dictator Fidel Castro. While in Miami candidate Obama made some strong and passionate statements about how if he were to be elected president his administration would not bow to Castro’s tyranny.

He excoriated Castro’s oppression and sympathized with the Cuban people pledging that as president he’d help bring freedom, liberty, and democracy to Cuba. At the height of his passion, Obama said, “I won’t stand for this injustice” and promised that, “together we will stand up for freedom in Cuba.”

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The California State lottery is apparently in the purview of the state’s employees union, the Service Employees International Union. At least it is as far as the SEIU is concerned. Proving once again that unions think everything in the world is their business, the California SEIU has donated $300,000 to Proposition 1C, a ridiculous plan that would empower the state capitol at Sacramento to “borrow” up to $5 billion from state lottery coffers.

Yes, I agree with you that the lottery should have nothing at all to do with an employees union. But if it means absconding with more money in new and illicit ways, why, unions are all for that, naturally.

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The Associated Press has for years been good for inventing the news out of its own vivid imagination. But now, not only is the AP inventing news it is inventing an entire national self-image, then batting it down all in an effort to prop up the feckless foreign policy of its messiah Barrack Obama. Obama’s “The U.S. Sucks” tour isn’t over yet and the AP is loving it.

Did you know that everyone in the U.S. has a “deeply held belief” that this country “does not make mistakes in dealings with either friends or foes”? Well, neither did anyone else, but the Associated Press sure does. And what’s more the AP is praising Obama for “goring the ox” of this obviously “deeply held belief” in which we stupid Americans are prone to believe.

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Barack Obama has just taken the next step towards a complete disregard for America’s foreign policy by back slapping self-professed enemy to the “great Satan,” tin pot dictator and oppressor, Hugo Chavez. As Obama grins and associates with such low-end characters, treating them as worthy members of the international community, he drags down both the United States and any country that strives to treat its people with the dignity they deserve as human beings.

But, Obama is, at least, fulfilling a campaign promise to treat all foreign leaders as equals no matter how evil, oppressive, and murderous they are. His compatriots on the left agree with this sort of engagement claiming that such “diplomacy” can only be a good thing. Despite this, though, this basic engagement-is-good ideal is not a principle held consistently by the left proving that situational ethics are the only ethics that the left can muster.

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Where is the Obama administration’s sense of propriety? Apparently it’s wrapped up in victory-at-any-cost mode if the website for the federal government’s Health and Human Services is concerned. For, if you go to the HHS.gov website, you’ll see a banner that advertises for a political issue, instead of a legitimate government “service.”

There you’ll see a banner/button pushing the political cause of nationalized health care. Worse, clicking on that button takes you to a faux petition style email page where you can “state your support” to the president for his “commitment to health care reform.” This is basically the president giving the public a fake place to tell him to support his own cause. There is also a link to healthreform.gov which is little else but an Obama issue advocacy campaign website and not really a legitimate government site at all.

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So let’s review: what happens when you are an average citizen that skips out on paying late fees? You get your car repossessed, your home foreclosed upon, or your utilities shut off. If it is a government fee you refuse to pay, you will likely end up in jail for not paying. But, whatever late fee you aren’t paying, it bodes major trouble if you’re a regular citizen.

Now what happens if you are a Democrat politician that finds a late fee assessed to you for whatever reason? Naturally, you decide you are exempt from paying such piffle because, after all, YOU are an important politician. Even if you are just a local state perfunctory, you are above being bothered by having to pay a late fee on anything. What do people think you are, anyway? A lowly VOTER!? Perish the thought.

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