To put it bluntly, over the past several years, the G.O.P. has made ideological choices that offend conservatism’s Burkean roots. This may seem like an airy-fairy thing that does nothing more than provoke a few dissenting columns from William F. Buckley, George F. Will and Andrew Sullivan. But suburban, Midwestern and many business voters are dispositional conservatives more than creedal conservatives. They care about order, prudence and balanced budgets more than transformational leadership and perpetual tax cuts. It is among these groups that G.O.P. support is collapsing.

American conservatism will never be just dispositional conservatism. America is a creedal nation. But American conservatism is only successful when it’s in tension — when the ambition of its creeds is restrained by the caution of its Burkean roots.

The Republican Collapse - New York Times

Fifty years ago this week, all eyes were on Little Rock, Arkansas, where nine black students were trying, for the first time, to desegregate a major Southern high school. The town of Grand Forks, North Dakota, with fewer than 150 blacks, hardly figured to be a key front in that battle - until Larry Lubenow talked to Louis Armstrong.

The day Louis Armstrong made noise - International Herald Tribune

Newly discovered snapshots donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum provide a stunning counterpoint to what up until now has been the only major source of preliberation Auschwitz photos.

Wow.

In the Shadow of Horror, SS guardians frolic - International Herald Tribune

Learn about redistricting and how to fix it, with this neato game.

The ReDistricting Game

A US grand jury in Guam opened an investigation of controversial lobbyist Jack Abramoff more than two years ago, but President Bush removed the supervising federal prosecutor, and the probe ended soon after.

The previously undisclosed Guam inquiry is separate from a federal grand jury in the District of Columbia that is investigating allegations that Abramoff bilked Indian tribes out of millions of dollars.

In Guam, a US territory in the Pacific, investigators were looking into Abramoff's secret arrangement with Superior Court officials to lobby against a court reform bill then pending in Congress. The legislation, since approved, gave the Guam Supreme Court authority over the Superior Court.

In 2002, Abramoff was retained by the Superior Court in what was an unusual arrangement for a public agency. The Los Angeles Times reported in May that Abramoff was paid with a series of $9,000 checks funneled through a Laguna Beach, Calif., lawyer to disguise the lobbyist's role working for the Guam court. No separate contract was authorized for Abramoff's work.

Follow this, Poppy Bush nominated the formaer US Attorney in 1991, Clinton left him there, he stayed on the job until about the beginning of 2003. Here's where things get interesting. At that point he's investigating and has sent out subpoenas based on what he's got and then gets axed.

We're probably looking at fraud, money laundering, bribes, and any number of other things based on the description given, and that's just in Guam. Now let's take a trip to Washington. This is not someone who was fired with all the other US Attorneys, he's got a different track. He gets fired, and replaced by, get this, an operative of the then governor of Guam, who the prior attorney was investigating for corruption!

Bush may end up meeting the high standards or Harding of Buchanan. Oh who am I kidding, he's exceeded them. Harding didn't get us into a war and Buchanan didn't have the same levels of influence peddling and corruption. Bush combines the worst of both worlds.

Bush removal ended Guam investigation - The Boston Globe

At the precinct, Previtera discovered that in addition to the initial misdemeanor, he’d been charged with two felonies: "false report of location of explosives" and a "hoax device."

"This was supposed to be more symbolic than anything," says Previtera, who never imagined they’d nab him for a false bomb threat. "I never wanted to scare anyone into thinking I had a bomb. I just wanted to make people think about international affairs." He adds, "I never uttered the word bomb or explosive."

There's a bomb, where's a bomb, everywhere's a bomb, bomb!

Boston has a history of abusing 'bomb hoax' charges for political reasons

You just gotta read this story. This is amazing stuff - this is ...potentially...revolutionary.

I cannot wait for the Discovery Channel special on this.
No doubt - even if it is absolutely positively authentic - if it could be proven beyond the shadow of a DOUBT - people still would not believe this one. People will resist this as surely as they do evolution.

-----

I like the Jesus TV from Discovery. This is neat!

Tomb of Jesus and Mary Magdaline

(270 minutes) In a four-and-a-half-hour special, News War, FRONTLINE examines the political, cultural, legal, and economic forces challenging the news media today and how the press has reacted in turn. Through interviews with key figures in the print and electronic media over the past four decades -- and with unequaled, behind-the-scenes access to some of today's most important news organizations, FRONTLINE traces the recent history of American journalism, from the Nixon administration's attacks on the media to the post-Watergate popularity of the press, to the new challenges presented by the war on terror and other global forces now changing -- and challenging -- the role of the press in our society.

I expect this to be excellent. Frontline is great.

Check out the episode breakdown:

NEWS WAR: SECRETS, SOURCES & SPIN (Part I)

Feb. 13, 2007, 9pm (check local listings)

In part one of News War, FRONTLINE examines the political and legal forces challenging the mainstream news media today and. how the press has reacted in turn. Correspondent Lowell Bergman talks to the major players in the debates over the role of journalism in 2007, examining the relationship between the Bush administration and the press; the controversies surrounding the use of anonymous sources in reporting from Watergate to the present; and the unintended consequences of the Valerie Plame investigation -- a confusing and at times ugly affair that ultimately damaged both reporters' reputations and the legal protections they thought they enjoyed under the First Amendment.

NEWS WAR: SECRETS, SOURCES & SPIN (Part II)

Feb. 20, 2007, 9 pm (check local listings)

Part two continues with the legal jeopardy faced by a number of reporters across the country, and the additional complications generated by the war on terror. Correspondent Lowell Bergman interviews reporters facing jail for refusing to reveal their sources in the context of leak investigations and asks questions on tough issues that now confront the editors of the nation's leading newspapers, including: how much can the press reveal about secret government programs in the war on terror without jeopardizing national security? FRONTLINE looks past the heated, partisan rhetoric to determine how much of this battle is politics and whether such reporting actually harms national security.

NEWS WAR: WHAT'S HAPPENING TO THE NEWS

Feb. 27, 2007, 9 pm (check local listings)

(90 min.) The third part of News War puts viewers on the front lines of an epic battle over the future of news. America's major network news divisions and daily... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]

FRONTLINE: News War

Colbert on O'Reilly:

O'Reilly on Colbert:

Colbert meets O'Reilly

This is your country on Medicare and Social Security.

The ratio of federal debt held by the public to GDP would climb from 37 percent currently to roughly 100 percent in 2030 and would continue to grow exponentially after that. The only time in U.S. history that the debt-to-GDP ratio has been in the neighborhood of 100 percent was during World War II. People at that time understood the situation to be temporary and expected deficits and the debt-to-GDP ratio to fall rapidly after the war, as in fact they did. In contrast, under the scenario I have been discussing, the debt-to-GDP ratio would rise far into the future at an accelerating rate. Ultimately, this expansion of debt would spark a fiscal crisis, which could be addressed only by very sharp spending cuts or tax increases, or both.

There is some very sound advice in here. The following statement seems so logical and obvious that one wonders why the Fed Chief has to say it.

Members of the Congress who put special emphasis on keeping tax rates low must accept that low tax rates can be sustained only if outlays, including those on entitlements, are kept low as well. Likewise, members who favor a more expansive role of the government, including relatively more-generous benefits payments, must recognize the burden imposed by the additional taxes needed to pay for the higher spending, a burden that includes not only the resources transferred from the private sector but also any adverse economic incentives associated with higher tax rates.

Unfortunately, there are a whole lot of people who are living in total denial about this.

Fed chief Bernanke's prepared testimony before Senate - Jan. 18, 2007