Kelvin White was in town Thursday to marry his Cincinnati sweetie.Well, at least they're keeping it in the family.Now, the wedding is off - unless White can come up with $500,000.
That's the bond a judge set Friday that is keeping White behind bars after he, his fiancée and three other people were arrested Thursday on drug-related charges.
Something strange happened the other day. All these different people -- friends, co-workers, relatives, people on a liberal e-mail list I read -- kept saying the same thing: They've suddenly developed a disdain for Bill and Hillary Clinton. Maybe this is just a coincidence, but I think we've reached an irrevocable turning point in liberal opinion of the Clintons.
The sentiment seems to be concentrated among Barack Obama supporters. Going into the campaign, most of us liked Hillary Clinton just fine, but the fact that tens of millions of Americans are seized with irrational loathing for her suggested that she might not be a good Democratic nominee. But now that loathing seems a lot less irrational. We're not frothing Clinton haters like ... well, name pretty much any conservative. We just really wish they'd go away.snip
The Clinton campaign is trying to make it seem as if the complaint is about negativity, and it is pointing out that Obama has criticized Hillary as well. That's what politicians are supposed to do when they compete for votes. But criticism isn't the same thing as lying and sleaze-mongering.
Am I starting to sound like a Clinton hater? It's a scary thought. Of course, to conservatives, it's a delicious thought. The Wall Street Journal published a gloating editorial noting that liberals had suddenly learned "what everyone else already knows about the Clintons." (By "everyone," it means Republicans.)
It made me wonder: Were the conservatives right about Bill Clinton all along? Maybe not right to set up a perjury trap so they could impeach him, but right about the Clintons' essential nature? Fortunately, the Journal's attempt to convince us that the Clintons have always been unscrupulous liars seemed to prove the opposite. Its examples of Clintonian lies were their claims that Bob Dole wanted to cut Medicare, that there was a vast right-wing conspiracy, that Paula Jones was "trailer trash" and that Kenneth Starr was a partisan.
So, henceforth, any terrorism perpetrated by persons of an Islamic persuasion will be designated "anti-Islamic activity." Britain's Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, unveiled the new brand name in a speech a few days ago. "There is nothing Islamic about the wish to terrorize, nothing Islamic about plotting murder, pain and grief," she told her audience. "Indeed, if anything, these actions are anti-Islamic."More.....Well, yes, one sort of sees what she means. Killing thousands of people in Manhattan skyscrapers in the name of Islam does, among a certain narrow-minded type of person, give Islam a bad name, and thus could be said to be "anti-Islamic" – in the same way that the Luftwaffe raining down death and destruction on Londoners during the Blitz was an "anti-German activity."
But I don't recall even Neville Chamberlain explaining, as if to a 5-year-old, that there is nothing German about the wish to terrorize and invade, and that this is entirely at odds with the core German values of sitting around eating huge sausages in beer gardens while wearing lederhosen.
So I guess I'll keep my mouth shut and just end my money to the Internal Revenue Service.
1. the income of a government from taxation, excise duties, customs, or other sources, appropriated to the payment of the public expenses.
2. the government department charged with the collection of such income.
3. revenues, the collective items or amounts of income of a person, a state, etc.
4. the return or yield from any kind of property, patent, service, etc.; income.
5. an amount of money regularly coming in.
6. a particular item or source of income.
A chief federal judge took away five death penalty cases from a colleague criticized by some prosecutors for taking as many as eight years to issue appeals rulings.More....Judge Sandra Beckwith, chief of the U.S. District Court for southern Ohio, said she made the unusual move to ease the workload of U.S. District Judge Walter Rice.
Beckwith said decision was not made in response to complaints about Rice's handling of capital cases. The decision was mutual, she added.
"Judge Rice has a very heavy docket, and it seemed logical to give him some relief," she said. "These are enormous cases. They take a lot of time."
Two of the appeals removed from Rice's docket yesterday were filed almost eight years ago. The most recent case was filed three years ago.
"It's like a black hole in the universe," said Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters, whose Cincinnati-based office handled three of the cases. "Once a case goes in there, we don't hear from him for eight years."
Photo surfaces of smiling Clintons with Tony Rezko.
MORE...
Clinton injected the indicted developer's name this week in debate with Obama: 'I was fighting against those ideas when you were practicing law and representing your contributor, Rezko, in his slum landlord business in inner city Chicago.'
Clinton tells NBC 'TODAY' show on Friday: 'I probably have taken hundreds of thousands of pictures. I don't know the man. I wouldn't know him if he walked in the door.'
Police will conduct drunk driving checkpoint tonight in the city of Hamilton.
The 11 p.m. to 4 a.m. checkpoint will take place along Ohio 4 between Grand Boulevard and Fairfield city limits, said Officer Rich Burkhardt, a spokesman for the Hamilton Police Department.
Another, separate drunk driving checkpoint will be held Saturday night in neighboring Hamilton County, according to the Ohio State Highway Patrol’s Georgetown post.
The high figure represents 3.6 percent of the state's two-year, $52.3 billion budget that began in July and goes through June 2009.I did some calculations on my trusty Excel spreadsheet and it looks to me like the state's budgets have increased about 8% per year.In 1982-83, there was a $534 million deficit on a $6.7 billion budget - an 8 percent gap that was plugged with a hefty income tax increase. Other considerable deficits have happened roughly every decade since, with budget gaps just before and after the 2001 terror attacks comparable to current predictions.
More....It's astonishing to me that liberals still venerate Clinton. I can only assume that they admire his political success: he was the first representative of his party since FDR to win a second Presidential term. But his record of achievement in those two terms is appallingly slender.
Apart from Welfare Reform, which most Dems opposed anyway, his Presidency was divided pretty much equally between legislative logjam caused by his narcissistic faith in his wife's pipe dreams and impeachment efforts caused by his vile personal pathologies.
Yes, he happened to preside over a period of economic expansion, but we know by now that politicians have exceptionally limited ability to affect the course of the economy: in terms of the economy he got lucky. Even most of the Dems I know now accept this, so why is he still adored? I have to conclude that it's because people like winners more than anything else. Clinton's status is a consequence of the 'son of a bitch' philosophy: the guy may be a sexually predatory congenital liar, but he's OUR sexually predatory congenital liar.
Drug dealers beware: Gov. Eliot L. Spitzer wants your help in balancing the state budget.The governor proposed Tuesday that drug dealers be required to affix a state tax stamp on illegal drugs they sell — $3.50 per gram on marijuana and $200 per gram on drugs like heroin. He expects it to bring the state $13 million in revenue this year.
There wasn’t a whole lot of explanation about the idea, except a brief reference buried in one of the pieces of legislation accompanying the thousands of pages of budget documents released Tuesday. It says it will improve enforcement and tracking of illegal drug sales.
The Clintons play dirty when they feel threatened. But we knew that, didn't we?
The recent roughing-up of Barack Obama was in the trademark style of the Clinton years in the White House. High-minded and self-important on the surface, smarmily duplicitous underneath, meanwhile jabbing hard to the groin area. They are a slippery pair and come as a package. The nation is at fair risk of getting them back in the White House for four more years. The thought makes me queasy.
How did it take so long for these liberals to get what conservatives have known for over 16 years.
I can't tell. Is this Hillary or Miss Teen South Carolina.
Global warming could reduce how many hurricanes hit the United States, according to a new federal study that clashes with other research.More......The study is the latest in a contentious scientific debate over how manmade global warming may affect the intensity and number of hurricanes.
In it, researchers link warming waters, especially in the Indian and Pacific oceans, to increased vertical wind shear in the Atlantic Ocean near the United States. Wind shear, a change in wind speed or direction, makes it hard for hurricanes to form, strengthen and stay alive.
So that means "global warming may decrease the likelihood of hurricanes making landfall in the United States," according to researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Miami Lab and the University of Miami.
Would-be donors in the Seattle area are accusing blood banks of discriminatory policies banning most gay and bisexual men from giving blood.More...When the Puget Sound Blood Center announced last week that Western Washington's blood supply was at emergency levels, some people responded with frustration at the stringent requirements that deny about 6 percent of those who try to donate blood.
About 24,000 people have been placed on the Western Washington permanent deferral list in the past decade, according to the Puget Sound Blood Center. An extra 3,000 are temporarily deferred, for periods ranging from one day to three years. The area's blood centers have accepted blood from nearly 443,000 donors during the same time.
"It upsets me when I see signs that say, 'We need blood, give now,' but they don't want my blood," said Pete, 26, an office supervisor who lives in North Seattle. He was put on the deferral list three years ago because he had sex with a man one time.
Donors are placed on the list based on their answers to initial screening questions. Men who have had sexual contact with a man, even once, since 1977 are automatically disqualified.
More...Forty students from Creekside High and Bear Creek Middle schools in Fairburn will be the first to try the "Learn & Earn" program, where students will get paid to attend after-school tutoring programs.
Students will make approximately $8 an hour, and be eligible for bonuses if their grades improve, said Kirk Wilks, district spokesman. The initial students are in the eighth and 11th grades.
There will be a community kick-off Thursday at 3 p.m. in the Creekside High media center, 7405 Herndon Rd., Fairburn.
With the support of Fulton County Commissioner Robb Pitts, the pilot program will last 15 weeks and pay students for participation and performance. The object of the program is to determine if paying students to study will improve classroom attendance, grades and test scores, according to a news release from the district.
The thing to keep in mind about Reagan; he was the right guy for the right problems at the right time.It's foolish to wait for another Ronald Reagan. But not just because his political gifts are rare. There's a particular way in which Reagan was exceptional that many of us fail to appreciate: He was the only president of the last century who came to the office as the leader of an ideological movement.
Reagan gave "The Speech" in October 1964, inherited the leadership of the conservative movement after Goldwater's loss, defeated a moderate establishment Republican two years later to win the GOP nomination for governor of California, and then defeated the Democratic incumbent. He remained in a sense the leader of conservatives nationally while serving two terms as governor, ran unsuccessfully against Gerald Ford in 1976, and won the presidency in 1980. He was a conservative first and a politician second, a National Review and Human Events reader first and an elected official second.
IF THE REAGAN Revolution is stalled in this election cycle, it is because those at the head of the movement have stopped emphasizing its personal appeal to the average American. This is not the fault of Limbaugh -- who is rightly perturbed that he must constantly spell out a candidate's conservative bona fides or lack thereof -- but of those who forget that conservative ideals can resonate with voters in a way that liberalism cannot.
While folks who listen to Limbaugh can proclaim their core beliefs from the rooftops, liberal "values" must be slowly indoctrinated into the mainstream. This is why liberal talk radio is such a failure. Except for their radical base, not many people can take the left-wing mantra straight up. To succeed, they must cloak their message in pleasant euphemisms like "choice" and "equal rights."
Whatever polls may say, the majority of the American people do not embrace higher taxes, the culture of perpetual victimhood, government intervention in their lives, the taking of innocent life, and the defeat of our military at the hands of those who would see us all dead.
The first candidate who climbs up on the rooftop with the Rush and the rest of us and shouts these things out loud will be the one who walks away with the prize this summer.
But then a great tightening occurred. Conservative institutions and interest groups proliferated in Washington. The definition of who was a true conservative narrowed. It became necessary to pass certain purity tests — on immigration, abortion, taxes and Terri Schiavo.
An oppositional mentality set in: if the liberals worried about global warming, it was necessary to regard it as a hoax. If The New York Times editorial page worried about waterboarding, then the code of conservative correctness required one to think it O.K.
Apostates and deviationists were expelled or found wanting, and the boundaries of acceptable thought narrowed. Moderate Republicans were expelled for squishiness. Millions of coastal suburbanites left the party in disgust.
Brooks then continues to rip conservatives for their luke warm support for the republicans running in the primaries.
Now the self-described “public interest group” may have come up with its biggest find of all (so far). It has obtained records from the Clinton Presidential Library that reveal the internal workings and attitudes of people associated with Hillary Clinton’s National Taskforce on Health Care Reform. These documents penetrate Clinton’s carefully crafted personae, expose her true character and suggest what she and her Democratic allies would impose on the nation, if given the power. The documents could — and should — have an impact on her presidential candidacy.
According to Judicial Watch, a June 18, 1993 internal memorandum entitled “A Critique of Our Plan,” authored by someone with the initials “P.S.,” acknowledges that critics were correct when they questioned whether the plan would work. “I can think of parallels in wartime,” wrote “P.S.”, but I have trouble coming up with a precedent in our peacetime history for such broad and centralized control over a sector of the economy. … Is the public really ready for this? ... None of us knows whether we can make it work well or at all…”
Just for discussion, I'd like to ask. Are there any "successful" african-americans in our society?But for ordinary Americans, race still plays a large role in determining personal earnings, educational attainment, access to health care, housing options and social relationships. We measure our progress not yet in equality, but in inching forward to close considerable gaps.
That is why, despite the fact that schools and federal offices are closed today, Martin Luther King Day is not a day of rest, but of restlessness. It is a day of both pride and discomfort.
The Americans With Disabilities Act was passed to give disabled people better opportunities in the labor market, in transportation, healthcare, and other arenas. But the economists Daron Acemoglu and Joshua Angrist found that the A.D.A. actually worsened the job opportunities for disabled workers. Their seminal paper is called “Consequences of Employment Protection? The Case of the Americans With Disabilities Act.”
