Politics, Government & Public Policy: October 2004 Archives

More on the FEC complaint against John and Ken.

In a complaint to the Federal Elections Commission, the National Republican Campaign Committee accused radio station KFI-AM (640) co-hosts John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou of "criminal behavior" for attacking Rep. David Dreier, R-Glendora, and endorsing his Democratic opponent, Cynthia Matthews.

By criticizing Dreier's positions on immigration, promoting a "Fire Dreier" campaign and making on-air appeals for voters to elect Matthews, the NRCC said, the hosts gave Matthews an unlawful corporate, in-kind contribution of more than $25,000.

"This behavior is illegal and must be appropriately punished," the NRCC charged, noting violation of the law carries a penalty of fines and jail time.

How utterly ludicrous... the idea that anyone in American can face criminal prosecution for advocating the defeat of an elected official! Disgusting. Totally repulsive. Why not contact the NRCC and tell them what you think?

Mailing Address

National Republican Congressional Committee
320 First Street, S.E
Washington, D.C. 20003

Phone Numbers

NRCC Main Number, (202) 479-7000
News Media Inquiries, (202) 479-7070
Campaign Assistance, (202) 479-7050
Information on Contributing, (202) 479-7030
Legal Compliance Questions, (202) 479-7069

Here's a link to the actual complaint. Go ahead and read it, but keep in mind that John and Ken have invited David Dreier onto their show numerous times, and he refused.

Maybe I'm slow, but I'm only now realizing that I need to add Orson Scott Card to my sidebar. Here's a piece he wrote earlier this month about John Kerry's ignorance of science and his absurd position on abortion.

I was amused when Kerry said, during the second debate, "I believe in science."

That was a pretty clear contrast with George W. Bush, who believes in God.

The real difference in their faiths is that George W. Bush has actually read the Bible and gone to church, so chances are he knows something about what Christians believe about God.

Unfortunately, John Kerry has no idea what scientists believe about science.

As Charles Krauthammer pointed out in a sharply reasoned essay ("Anything to Get Elected"), Edwards's recent statement, "When John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk, get up out of that wheelchair and walk again," does not overlap with actual science at any point.

It's religion, pure and simple. And it's not really faith in science. It's faith in money spent on science. And, of course, faith in the gullibility of the American voter.

And regarding Mr. Kerry's position on abortion -- which I've dissected previously -- Mr. Card writes:

From the second debate between Bush and Kerry, when Kerry was asked about abortion:

"KERRY: I cannot tell you how deeply I respect the belief about life and when it begins. I'm a Catholic, raised a Catholic. I was an altar boy. Religion has been a huge part of my life. It helped lead me through a war, leads me today.

"But I can't take what is an article of faith for me and legislate it for someone who doesn't share that article of faith, whether they be agnostic, atheist, Jew, Protestant, whatever. I can't do that." ...

What I want to know is how you can possibly legislate anything at all that does not involve taking your personal belief about what is right and wrong and punishing those who don't go along.

Did John Kerry not vote for the notorious "hate speech" laws? Didn't he decide that certain words and ideas were so evil and loathsome that people who say them while committed a crime should receive extra punishment?

Didn't John Kerry support the ban on peaceful demonstrations anywhere near abortion clinics? Didn't he impose his beliefs on those who hope to save innocent lives by kneeling and silently praying in front of abortion clinics, when he voted for the law that allows them to be arrested for that? ...

So in his worldview, only religious people are forbidden to impose their beliefs about right and wrong on others. As long as you have no religion behind you, you can force your beliefs about right and wrong on anybody you want.

(HT: Greg Staples.)

Lest anyone think this current presidential campaign is particularly nasty, consider the history of mudslinging.

History shows that these sorts of unsupportable attacks and seemingly childish antics are not new to the election game. Candidates for all sorts of public office have engaged in name calling and public denunciations of their opponents from America's earliest days as a democracy.

Not even one of our most admired founding fathers was safe from personal attacks. According to a BBC news article, during the election of 1800, Thomas Jefferson was "accused of favoring the teaching of 'murder, robbery, rape, adultery and incest,'" by his opponent.

Perhaps one of the most venomous elections was in 1828, when John Quincy Adams was running for President against General Andrew Jackson. According the same BBC news article, Adams was "nicknamed 'The Pimp' by the campaign of his opponent…based on a rumour that he had once coerced a young woman into an affair with a Russian nobleman when he had been American ambassador to Russia."

In response, Adams' supporters came out with a pamphlet which read: "General Jackson's mother was a common prostitute brought to this country by British solders! She afterwards married a mulatto man with whom she had several children of which number General Jackson is one!!"

Then, there was the relentless slander and ridicule that Lincoln endured. According to an article in the Bradenton Herald, his opponents made fun of his "slang-whanging stump speaker" style, Newspapers made fun of his looks ("a horrid looking wretch"), and cartoonists pictured him in racist scenarios. One man from Georgia proclaimed that Lincoln planned to "force inter-marriage between children - that 'within 10 years or less our children will be the slaves of Negroes.'"

Merely two decades later, during Grover Cleveland's election in 1884, Cleveland, the son of a Presbyterian minister, was accused of fathering an illegitimate child, according to a Scripps Howard News Service article. Cleveland's supporters in turn called his opponent a liar.

By the 1950's, with America's red scare shadowing over much of the country, sympathy with communism replaced sex scandals as the most vitriolic accusation one candidate could hurl at another. Scripps Howard News Service article reports that Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy even accused the entire administration of President Harry Truman of harboring communists.

Bob Woodward of the Washington Post has published a series of tough questions he planned to ask Senator Kerry about the battle of Iraq. He says he was told he would get a chance to interview the Senator, but that Mr. Kerry and/or his people decided to back out. Even without Mr. Kerry's responses the questions are excellent and worth reading.

Frank K* envisions a presidential debate that would be almost as entertaining as mine. Or maybe more entertaining. Well, his is longer anyway. Not like that. Ok, I'm stopping now.

* Because Frank is totally whipped.

Wacky Hermit offers her perspective on encouraging people to vote (without linking to my earlier post!) and likens democracy to the fair division problem (which is fascinating in its own right).

My view on the matter is colored by my experience with fair division, which was the topic of my Master's paper. In fair division, where a "cake" is divided up fairly among a bunch of players, the players are all assumed to have a "value system" (measure, for those technical math junkies out there) by which they determine the value of any given piece of cake. As part of the rules of fair division, players' value systems are not questioned or challenged. If a player says that piece of cake is 30% of the entire cake, that's what it is to that player, even if someone else thinks it's 20% and another thinks it's 50%. If you start requiring players to value a piece a certain way, it throws off the fairness of the algorithm.

Likewise I leave each voter's measure of the candidates to their own devices. If you want to base your vote for a candidate on which is alphabetically first, on how much he pays for his haircuts, on the aspects of Venus in conjunction with Jupiter, on the basis of numerological analysis of the book of Hosea or the fact that he came to your town before the election and the other guy didn't, that's your prerogative. I can think you're stupid for doing it (that's my right), but I can't take away your right. The law says that if you are a citizen, you have a right to vote. Period.

Except that laws don't create rights, they only recognize the rights that God (or nature, if you're a libertarian) gave us. And voting isn't a right. I've said it a million times: democracy can be a useful tool for protecting liberty, but democracy is not a requirement for liberty. Our society prevents all sorts of people from voting because we believe they would make poor decisions: children, the mentally impaired, felons, non-citizens, people in comas, and so forth. Wacky Hermit doesn't say whether or not she would support truly universal suffrage, but if voting is a right in the same way as are "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" then what alternative is there? (Except perhaps for felons.)

I've written a lot about women in combat, and my general position is that allowing women to serve in direct combat positions is unnecessary and would be harmful to morale and performance. (At least peruse my previous posts before just jumping in with "no it wouldn't!".) Considering the Abu Ghraib travesty, no one should dispute that mixed-gender units in any context can expect to face difficult disciplinary situations as well.

So I'm really curious as to why the military is starting to push civilian leaders to allow women closer to the front-line.

The Army is negotiating with civilian leaders about eliminating a women-in-combat ban so it can place mixed-sex support companies within warfighting units, starting with a division going to Iraq in January. ...

"When that policy was made up, there was a different threat," said Lt. Col. Chris Rodney, an Army spokesman at the Pentagon. "We imagined a more linear combat environment. Now, with the nature of asymmetrical threats, we have to relook at that policy."

Col. Rodney cited the fighting in Iraq as typifying the new threat whereby all soldiers, support or combat, face attack by rockets, mortars, roadside bombs and ambushes.

"Everybody faces a similar threat," he said. "There is no front-line threat right now."

That sounds disingenuous to me, because there are certainly some roles that face a higher likelihood of direct combat than others. I'm just not sure what the motivation is -- why are military planners attempting to reverse a millenias-old understanding? Do they expect it will actually improve our military capability? Is it pure politics? An internal power struggle? Budget woes?

Here are John and Ken's California proposition voting recommendations for 2004. In summary:

Proposition 63: No
Proposition 64: Yes
Proposition 66: No
Proposition 67: No
Proposition 68: No
Proposition 69: Yes
Proposition 70: No
Proposition 71: No
Proposition 72: No
Measure A: No

I like their positions, and this is probably how I'm going to vote.

Is there any doubt about who's winning the culture war?

Kerry adviser Mike McCurry said it's important in the final days of the campaign that voters "get a better sense of John Kerry, the guy."

That means the Democratic senator is spending some of the dwindling time before Election Day hunting, talking about his faith and watching his beloved Red Sox. ...

"The fact that Senator Kerry is a person of faith is something that might help voters who are undecided," McCurry said.

Kerry has been explaining it more in recent weeks as he campaigns in socially conservative areas like rural Ohio. At a town hall meeting Saturday in Xenia, he talked about taking his rosary into battle during the Vietnam War. "I will bring my faith with me to the White House and it will guide me," Kerry said.

None of these things are popular with the people who really want to vote for Kerry, and he wouldn't be bothering with all this posing if his actual positions and beliefs could get him elected.

Despite the claims of idiotic groups like Rock the Vote, I've come to the conclusion that low voter turn-out is a good thing. If most people are too preoccupied with living their lives to learn about issues and go vote, that means they're safe and wealthy. Ignorant, maybe, but that they can afford to be speaks of their nation's success.

If such a person gets an inkling to vote and decides to banish their ignorance and contribute to the political process, fantastic. But I'm not at all certain that such a decision is morally commendable or should be encouraged. Politics is an overhead cost associated with society and government, and as such it should occupy as few of our resources as possible.

As for this present election, if you're still undecided then please consider staying home.

Here's another example of an un-careful statement by John Kerry coming back to bite him.

ORLANDO, Fla. -- Last summer, John F. Kerry refused to cross a police picket line and address the US Conference of Mayors meeting in Boston. Last night he rode in a motorcade that crossed two Florida police picket lines en route to a get-out-the-vote rally in vote-rich Orlando. ...

One of the pickets, Officer Paul Bruning, said the union notified Democratic officials in Miami last week of its plans to picket Kerry both at Orlando International Airport and at the Barnett Park Recreation Center.

''It's not against John Kerry; it's our mayor that's treating us poorly," Bruning said. ''Boston police were at an impasse for two years, and after he refused to cross, they had a contract in two weeks."

On June 26, the day before he had been scheduled to address the mayors' conference, Kerry told the Globe: ''I don't cross picket lines. I never have." Nearly a month later, on July 22, a state-appointed arbitrator settled the dispute by awarding the Boston officers a 14.5 percent raise over four years.

It's not like I care about picketers in general -- I cross picket lines at every opportunity -- but couldn't John Kerry at least attempt to live up to the positions he claims to hold? Note also that this article is from the Boston Globe, one of the most Kerry-friendly papers in the known universe.

Update:
Clayton Cramer writes a bit about the violent history of labor unions, which is part of why I have very little sympathy for union workers.

This is the kind of story that I can't believe anyone falls for, and yet.... MonsterP and the AP claim OREGON TEACHERS KICKED OUT OF BUSH SPEECH FOR SHIRTS SAYING “PROTECT OUR CIVIL LIBERTIES (sic). All that's in the AP story is:

Three Medford school teachers were threatened with arrest and escorted from the event after they showed up wearing T-shirts with the slogan "Protect our civil liberties." All three said they applied for and received valid tickets from Republican headquarters in Medford.

The women said they did not intend to protest. "I wanted to see if I would be able to make a statement that I feel is important, but not offensive, in a rally for my president," said Janet Voorhies, 48, a teacher in training.

MonsterP says:

Thursday’s event in Oregon sets a new bar for a Bush/Cheney campaign that has taken extraordinary measures to screen the opinions of those who attend Bush and Cheney speeches. For months, the Bush/Cheney campaign has limited event access to those willing to volunteer in Bush/Cheney campaign offices. In recent weeks, the Bush/Cheney campaign has gone so far as to have those who voice dissenting viewpoints at their events arrested and charged as criminals.

First off, I highly doubt there's no more to this story than meets the eye. What's on the backs of the shirts, for instance? Furthermore, rallies aren't a forum for protesting, they're a forum for showing support for whomever is rallying. People can protest outside, of course. People who won't leave when asked may be arrested, but that goes for rallies of any political persuasion. As for arrests at pro-Bush rallies, the same AP story reports that:

Two protesters were later arrested in Jacksonville, the historic Gold Rush town where Bush was spending the night. A few hundred people were demonstrating peacefully, but police moved to disperse the crowd after a few protesters put their hands on police officers, said Paul Wyntergreen, the Jacksonville city administrator.

If you attack police you're lucky if all you get is arrested.

Maybe others have thought of this before, but consider how the Electoral College mitigates the effects of voting fraud. No matter how many fake voters are registered in a state, all the fraud can do is turn that state's electoral votes to the other side. Fraud thus needs to be much more decentralized than it would need to be if we elected a president by popular vote, since in that case massive fraud in a single place could more easily swing the balance of the whole election.

For the people who were too lazy to actually watch last night's debate, I've used Microsoft Word's AutoSummarize tool to condense the candidates' points into ten sentences each. (Transcript.)

BUSH: My opponent talks about fiscal sanity. You voted to increase taxes 98 times. Most health care costs are covered by third parties. We're expanding veterans' health care throughout the country. If you have a child, you got tax relief. If you're married, you got tax relief. If you pay any tax at all, you got tax relief. We've increased funds. The people I talked to their spirits were high. I think people understand what she's saying.

KERRY: 82,000 Arizonians lost their health insurance under President Bush's watch. This president has turned his back on the wellness of America. President Bush has taken — he's the only president in history to do this. He's also the only president in 72 years to lose jobs — 1.6 million jobs lost. Once again, the president is misleading America. It works. The president just said that government-run health care results in poor quality. The jobs the president is creating pay $9,000 less than the jobs that we're losing. Well, again, the president didn't answer the question. Let me pay a compliment to the president, if I may.

So there you have it. For a more humorous summary of Kerry's positions, I refer you to the Grouchy Old Cripple.

Ok, so I've got my note sheet here in front of me. I started scoring the questions as I've done in the past, but I quickly realized that it was pointless -- President Bush beat Senator Kerry like a rented mule.

First off, I thought Bob Schieffer's questions were quite good. A couple of them were real gut punches, like his question to Kerry about refusing to change Social Security and his question to Bush about Roe v. Wade. I haven't read all the other blogs yet, but I imagine some of them will give Mr. Schieffer a hard time for set-ups like the "backdoor draft" question he tossed Kerry, but overall I thought he did a fine job.

Bush hit a homerun with nearly every question he answered. Unfortunately, he avoided a couple, diverting from jobs to education (which are related, sure) and one other that I can't recall at the moment. He got in a few excellent points, however, particularly his call for a market solution to health care and his excellent defense of the proposed Marriage Amendment. His answer about faith was much better than Kerry's, particularly because Kerry had just finished telling us how his faith wouldn't influence his decision-making (with regards to abortion). Bush handled the flu vaccine question well -- that one surprised me, but he knew what was going on even if he couldn't remember the company's name that screwed up the production. Bush repeatedly called attention to Kerry votes that contradict Kerry's currently claimed positions. I thought Bush was great in the second debate, and this time he was even a bit better, using more of Kerry's words and votes against him. (Although I liked the format of the second debate much better.)

As for Senator Kerry, he stumbled around quite a bit. I was surprised to hear him quote from the Bible three times and even use scripture to justify his decision not to legislate against abortion. I thought it was hilarious when he accused Bush of changing the subject on the third question, and then immediately and explicitly changed the subject himself. Every time Kerry said "but first let me go back to the previous question..." I wanted to pull my hair out. That's so annoying -- stay in the time limits, and move on. Once again Kerry kept declaring himself to be more fiscally conservative than Bush, which is ludicrous. I find it hard to believe anyone who cares about keeping government small is going to vote for Kerry (not that Bush is really much better). It was also hilarious when he was defending abortion as a "Constitutional right" and started listing off amendments. He said he wouldn't appoint judges that would overrule the first or fifth amendments, "or any other rights the courts decide on... uh, I mean that are in the Constitution" -- referring to Roe v. Wade, and directly acknowledging that the right to an abortion comes from judges, not the Constitution. That's freaking brilliant. Also brilliant: pointing out that Cheney has a lesbian daughter -- how classy. Kerry also mentioned Reagan at least once, and then closed with "my fellow Americans... God bless America", which is lifted directly from Reagan. On the plus side, he managed to only reference Vietnam once.

I hate the stupid hand motions the candidates do in these debates. The closed-hand thumb-pointing thing Kerry does is idiotic. The friend I was watching with said that she liked that Bush was always looking at Kerry when Kerry was speaking because she thought it demonstrated that Bush was being attentive, and I agree. She also said that Bush may have been looking hard to try to intimidate Kerry, which may also have been the case. Either way, the President clearly beat the Senator in the visual department tonight -- too bad he didn't wear his Bush Blue power tie.

So, will it make a difference? Was anyone watching? Who knows.

I noted before that John Kerry hasn't released all his military records and speculated that he was hiding something (as others have, as well). Well, uh, maybe I was right.

An official Navy document on Senator Kerry’s campaign Web site listed as Mr. Kerry’s “Honorable Discharge from the Reserves” opens a door on a wellkept secret about his military service.

The document is a form cover letter in the name of the Carter administration’s secretary of the Navy,W. Graham Claytor. It describes Mr. Kerry’s discharge as being subsequent to the review of “a board of officers.” This in itself is unusual. There is nothing about an ordinary honorable discharge action in the Navy that requires a review by a board of officers.

According to the secretary of the Navy’s document, the “authority of reference” this board was using in considering Mr. Kerry’s record was “Title 10, U.S. Code Section 1162 and 1163.”This section refers to the grounds for involuntary separation from the service. What was being reviewed, then, was Mr.Kerry’s involuntary separation from the service. And it couldn’t have been an honorable discharge, or there would have been no point in any review at all.The review was likely held to improve Mr. Kerry’s status of discharge from a less than honorable discharge to an honorable discharge.

A Kerry campaign spokesman, David Wade, was asked whether Mr. Kerry had ever been a victim of an attempt to deny him an honorable discharge. There has been no response to that inquiry.

If Kerry were dishonorably discharged, unearthing it now would be a perfect "October Surprise" for the Republicans.

I also mentioned that Kerry and his wife haven't released their complete tax records, and now we can see why: on over $5.5 million of income in 2003 the Kerrys paid a mere $840,500 in taxes -- that's just 15.2%. The Bushes had around 1/7th the income of the Kerrys but paid 28% in taxes.

(HT: James Taranto for the military records pointer.)

Is there such a thing as a bad tax cut? Well, yeah, particularly if it distorts the natural market. Referring to the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004,

How much will this all cost? The bill’s sponsors claim it will cost the Treasury nothing. For every tax dollar given away—around 140 billion of them, in all—another will be clawed back, they say. The bill does close some loopholes and tear down some tax shelters. Many of the giveaways are also supposed to be temporary. But tax cuts, even ones with expiration dates, rarely die—some enterprising politician usually finds a way to make them permanent. Assuming that happens this time, the bill will only add to America’s fiscal difficulties.

Those fiscal problems are making many economists uneasy. But not all are as fatalistic as Mr Buiter. Indeed, some still hope for fundamental tax reform in the United States. For them, the true burden of taxation is not the money it levies but the economic decisions it distorts: decisions to work, save and invest. They hold up the tax reform Ronald Reagan passed in 1986 as an example of how to broaden and streamline the tax code, removing its distortions and freeing it from special interests.

Now, I don't believe tax cuts "cost" anything. The money doesn't belong to the government, it belongs to us, so a tax cut isn't an expenditure. I think the whole first paragraph there is fluff, but I quoted it for context because I think the second paragraph is important. The distortions created by our tax structure are bad for our liberty and bad for our economy. (And that includes things like the child tax credit, the mortgage interest deduction, and the charitable donation deduction.) What we need is not just a cut in taxes, but a vast simplification of the tax structure, which is one major reason I'm in favor of either a flat tax or a national sales tax.

Ok, so there's voter fraud in Colorado, but the news story leaves out a critical piece of information.

With just 21 days left until an election in which every vote will count, the 9News I-Team has uncovered voter registration fraud that could cause chaos on Election Day for hundreds, possibly thousands of Colorado voters. ...

Some voter registration application forms are completely bogus. Others belong to legitimate voters, who have had one or two facts changed that could affect their registration when they show up at the polls November 2nd. Tom Stanislawski registered to vote six years ago. But this summer, someone signed him up again and changed his party affiliation. "My concern would be I'd walk in November 2nd and be unable to vote," he said.

From which party to which party?

Some of the registration drive workers earn $2 per application or about $10 an hour. One woman admitted to forging three people's names on about 40 voter registration applications. Kym Cason says she was helping her boyfriend earn more money from a get-out-the-vote organization called ACORN or Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. ACORN works with low or moderate-income families on housing issues. Cason said her extra registrations earned her boyfriend $50.

ACORN claims to be nonpartisan, but c'mon -- just do a Google search and you'll find that they regularly protest along side ANSWER and other Stalinist/socialist/communist groups.

So how come the political parties involved in the fraud aren't named in the news story? I find it hard to believe the reporters didn't bother to check. Is there anyone out there willing to bet me money that less than 90% of the fraud involves actions helpful to the Democrats?

Here's a story with some info on the status of Representative John Linder's proposal to eliminate the IRS and institute a national sales tax.

Now that was one of the best debates I've ever seen. I liked the format much better than that of the first debate; the questions were far superior, and it was much more confrontational. The only question that felt particularly unfair was the last one to President Bush in which a lady asked him to name three mistakes he had made over the past four years. It was a fine question, but when Senator Kerry answered it he should have offered up some mistakes that he -- the Senator -- had made over the past four years, not simply taken the opportunity to attack Bush again.

First off, the President had a much better performance than he did in the first debate, there can be no question about that. He was more confident, more passionate, more collected, more clear, and more on the offense. There must have been a calculated decision to avoid mentioning France's and Germany's announcements that they would not help in Iraq no matter who is elected president, but aside from that omission I think Bush did very well. He also could have mentioned that Saddam was bribing members of the security council to oppose America, but again, there must have been a conscious decision to avoid that for fear of alienating our precious "allies".

Senator Kerry did very well also. There were a couple of instances in which he avoided answering or veered off on a tangent -- such as the question about the environment and the one about Iranian nukes -- but he hasn't had any trouble being concise, which many people expected. Obviously I don't agree with many of his positions, but his attacks on Bush's lack of fiscal discipline were well-placed... if only there were any hope that Kerry would do better. He spoke tough about the war on terror, but he focused on Bin Laden too heavily; I think most Americans realize that OBL and al Qaeda are just one aspect of the greater war. He also twisted like a pretzel to avoid the abortion-funding question, but in the end I think his position was pretty clear, as was the President's.

Although neither candidate really means it, I was amazed to hear them fighting over who would be tighter with my money. I'm not a fan of child tax credits (people with children use more government services, not less) but that a Democrat is offering to cut taxes on anyone is astounding, and a clear sign that old-style socialism is dead, in word anyway. Of course, Kerry's federal health care program plan gives lie to the hope, but then Bush is hardly better on that score what with the recent prescription drug zepplin. Bush claimed that aside from Homeland Security and the War on Terror, discretionary spending grew at only 1% per year -- is that right? I think he may be fudging the numbers somehow, but I'm sure some other blogger will dig into it.

Overall, I think America has two clear choices. In the past people (generally on the fringes) have claimed that the Democrats and Republicans are nearly identical, but in 2004 I think the candidates have laid out starkly contrasting visions for America. The decision we make as a nation will send profound reverberations ringing through history.

Check out Hugh Hewitt's scorecard for more detailed information on all the questions.

Did anyone else notice that Senator Kerry has shifted from "I've got a great plan for Iraq that I'm going to lay out to the American people" to "I have laid out my plan for Iraq to America, and I know my plan has a better chance of working"? The only thing missing is, like, the actual plan itself. Shouldn't that go somewhere between A and B?

I caught the first half on the radio in my car and the second half at my friend's house. There's not much to say... the Vice President walked away with it. It's odd to me that he would have been so certain about not meeting Senator Edwards and yet mistaken, but otherwise I think he did a great job. He could have done more to point out that the "huge corporations" Edwards loathes are actually owned by Americans -- specifically Halliburton.

It was a bit odd that the VP surrendered so much time on a few answers. That's unusual for political debates, but in general I think it's smart to be concise rather than to keep talking just to fill space. That's what Edwards did several times, jumping from topic to topic, and it was annoying. Despite Cheney's restraint, the debate still went 10 minutes over its alloted time.

So John Kerry brought an illegal pen to the debates... big deal, right? Not really I guess, but it's yet another bit of dishonesty in a long, unnecessary, pointless string of deceptions. I'm sure he knew the debates rules, so why did he bring a pen in his pocket? Why did he lie about Christmas in Cambodia? Why did he lie about helping the CIA and getting a magic hat? Why did he lie about throwing his medals over the White House fence? Why did he lie about being at the armistice signing at the end of the first Gulf War? None of these things are huge -- not like lying about war crimes during the Vietnam War -- and none of them would help him much, even if they were true. So what's the point? Many of these claims were trivially easy to falsify. Why does John Kerry feel the need to pad his impressive resume with silly lies?

I can't find a "neutral" article on California SB1313... just numerous pieces labeling it the "Pedophile Protection Act", which sounds pretty accurate to me. WorldNetDaily explains the effect of the recently passed bill (and signed today (I think) by Governor Arnold, though I can't find a news story):

Under existing criminal law, anyone who regularly comes into contact with children is required to report an instance in which there is reason to believe a child has been molested or abused, Ackerman points out.

Typical mandatory reporters include pastors, priests, church volunteers, teachers, school volunteers, and medical personnel.

But the bill, SB1313, would eliminate mandatory reporting for anyone who can be characterized as a "volunteer."

That means a Sunday school teacher, for example, would not be required to report her knowledge of a pastor's molestation of children.

Critics say the bill also eliminates mandatory reporting in cases where children are having sex with each other, and severe emotional abuse may no longer be a reportable event at all.

Sounds like a bad idea to me. Meanwhile, amidst all the justified outrage aimed at the Catholic Church for harboring child abusers,

Ackerman, while working for the United States Justice Foundation, persuaded the California Attorney General's office to issue a written opinion to the California Medical Board that affirmed the requirement of reporting for anyone who comes into regular contact with children as part of professional duties.

The report, following a petition by more than 10,000 people, presented evidence that Planned Parenthood had seen over 30,000 children in California, but not one instance of reporting to law enforcement could be found.

Planned Parenthood is an evil organization.