But this time, the elected official:

1. Actually “sexually groped” a legislative aide,
2. Was re-elected after the story broke,
3. Remains in office today,
4. Is called an “honorable man” by those in his party,
5. Only received a censure,
6. Enjoyed the press originally sitting on the story,
7. Saw his party affiliation not mentioned until paragraph 28 of a 29 paragraph AP story (and not mentioned at all in another).

I’ll give you one guess which party he represents.

Maybe Barack Obama will think twice before claiming again that “arguments of liberals are more often grounded in reason and fact” after hearing how Democrat Senator Joe Biden refers to him (audio).

“I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy, I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”

So I guess Biden thinks the prior black candidates have been nothing but illiterate, dumb and dirty? Would that be an argument grounded in reason or fact?

Biden apparently has a history of disparaging minorities. Remember his take on Indians and their influx into 7-11’s and Dunkin Donut shops?

Would that be reason or fact?

Welcome to the big tent.

UPDATE:
Al Sharpton responds:

Mr. Sharpton said that when Mr. Biden called him to apologize, Mr. Sharpton started off the conversation reassuring Mr. Biden about his hygienic practices. “I told him I take a bath every day,” Mr. Sharpton said.

Others:
LaShawn reviews “Obama: The Clean Negro”
Michelle sums it up in three words: “Biden.Foot.Mouth”
Allah says: “Biden announces, immediately destroys presidential hopes”
Ian points to an interview with Debbie Schlussel where she compares the liberals’ reaction to Biden’s statement with the reaction to Rush Limbaugh’s comments on Donovan McNabb.

I’m not referring to the fact that global warming is due “not to human activity but primarily to a long, moderate solar-linked cycle,” but to the annual cycle of news coverage where the MSM discovers (or should I say, rediscovers) President Bush finally acknowledging the existence of global warming.

Associated Press, Jan. 27, 2007:

“Now even George W. Bush says [climate change is] a problem. […] [D]uring last week’s State of the Union address Bush finally referred to global warming as an established fact.”

Finally! The first time! At least, since 2005:

In 2005, however, Europeans sensed a shift when Bush was asked about the issue in Denmark. “Listen,” [President Bush] said, “I recognize that the surface of the Earth is warmer and that an increase in greenhouse gases caused by humans is contributing to the problem.”

And that was — finally! – the first time Bush had acknowledged it…since 2004, when:

A Bush administration report suggests that evidence of global warming has begun to affect animal and plant populations in visible ways, and that rising temperatures in North America are due in part to human activity.

Finally! The first time the Bush administration ever acknowledged global warming! At least, since 2001, when President Bush said:

First, we know the surface temperature of the earth is warming. […] And the National Academy of Sciences indicate that the increase is due in large part to human activity.

Apparently, the media has to rediscover this “finally” moment every year or so.

…and the cycle continues.

For those of you who claim to “support the troops, but oppose the war”, here are a few words from those troops you claim to support:

Sorry, but even those “dumb, lazy kids” see through your BS.

Here’s Hillary Clinton this past weekend pandering in Iowa (hat tip: Ian).

“I said that we should not go to war unless we have allies. So he took the authority that I and others gave him and he misused it, and I regret that deeply. And if we had known then what we know now, there never would have been a vote and I never would have voted to give this president that authority.”

And here’s Hillary Clinton in 2003, explaining her vote to some Code Pinkos.

With respect to whose responsibility it is to disarm Saddam Hussein, I just do not believe that, given the attitudes of many people in the world community today, that there would be a willingness to take on very difficult problems, were it not for the United States leadership, and I’m talking specifically about what had to be done in Bosnia and Kosovo where my husband could not get a Security Council resolution to save the Kosovar Albanians from ethnic cleansing. And we did it alone as the United States, and we had to do it alone. And so I see it somewhat differently. So forgive me for my experience and perspective.”

Is she lying now or was she lying then? What a difference a campaign cycle makes…

And back then she was justifying her vote, not based on what Bush may have presented, but what had been “known” for a long time.

“There is a very easy way to prevent anyone from being put into harm’s way, that is for Saddam Hussein to disarm. And I have absolutely no belief that he will. I have to say that this is something I’ve followed for more than a decade. If he were serious about disarming, he would have been much more forthcoming. I ended up voting for the resolution after carefully reviewing the information, intelligence that I had available, talking with people whose opinions I trusted, tried to discount the political or other factors that I didn’t believe should be in any way a part of this decision. I would love to agree with you, but I can’t based on my own understanding and assessment of the situation.”

So here’s my question. If this was something she “followed for more than a decade” and “carefully review[ed] the information” and “talk[ed] with people whose opinions [she] trusted” and she “tried to discount the political or other factors that [she] didn’t believe should be in any way a part of this decision”… and she still voted for it, then does it really give American voters a comforting feeling to now hear that she feels like her decision was a very bad one? Ignoring that this is an obvious flip-flop for political expediency, do we really want Hillary as President if she is so capable of making such bad decisions after such a prolonged review of the situation… or the fact that she surrounds herself with trusted advisors that are so completely wrong on matters of foreign policy?

I don’t think so.

Which is less of a suprise? That this question would appear from a liberal or that it would appear in the L.A. Times? Here’s a clip of the article:

IMAGINE THAT on 9/11, six hours after the assault on the twin towers and the Pentagon, terrorists had carried out a second wave of attacks on the United States, taking an additional 3,000 lives. Imagine that six hours after that, there had been yet another wave. Now imagine that the attacks had continued, every six hours, for another four years, until nearly 20 million Americans were dead. This is roughly what the Soviet Union suffered during World War II, and contemplating these numbers may help put in perspective what the United States has so far experienced during the war against terrorism.

Has the American reaction to the attacks in fact been a massive overreaction? Is the widespread belief that 9/11 plunged us into one of the deadliest struggles of our time simply wrong? If we did overreact, why did we do so? Does history provide any insight?

Or we could use this same hypothetical to reach a far different conclusion… that the Bush administration’s policies have been an enormous success. That instead of battling an onslaught of daily attacks, we haven’t seen another 9/11-type attack on our soil. But of course, reaching that kind of conclusion would require giving some credit to the Bush administration.

The author, liberal David Bell, goes on to compare the American deaths attributed to 9/11 and the subsequent military actions with the deaths of Russians during WWII to claim 9/11 wasn’t really all that significant. (Ironic, since the same liberals refuse to use such moral relativism with military casualties in Iraq versus other wars)

Certainly, if we look at nothing but our enemies’ objectives, it is hard to see any indication of an overreaction. The people who attacked us in 2001 are indeed hate-filled fanatics who would like nothing better than to destroy this country. But desire is not the same thing as capacity, and although Islamist extremists can certainly do huge amounts of harm around the world, it is quite different to suggest that they can threaten the existence of the United States.

Not only is Bell relying on John Kerry’s “Global Test” that include “proportional response”, but he’s arguing that we shouldn’t be fighting so hard because the terrorists can only kill a bunch of us, but probably not all of us… thus, in the words of Michael Moore, “there is no terrorist threat.”

So I wonder at what point Bell would advocate fighting back. After 10,000 innocent civilians are killed? After 100,000 thousand? Or would it take 300,000,000? After all, that would still leave a million citizens alive and well to continue our existence.

Bell reaches the same flawed conclusion about the war on terror as many reached with the war in Iraq… that we ought to wait until the enemy has the capacity to carry out its threats before engaging it. But if we wait until the enemy has the capacity… we will have waited too long.

And responding proportionally doesn’t end fights, it prolongs them.

..and to an Islamic fundamentalist enemy, no less.

John Kerry and Former Iranian President and America Hater Mohammad Khatami

Looks like Nancy Pelosi’s swamp has a clog in the drain.

From the party that brought you Alcee “Impeached Judge” Hastings and William “Dollars in the Freezer” Jefferson, now comes Diane Feinstein who’s been turning a nice profit using her position in Congress to appropriate money for her husband.

In the November 2006 election, the voters demanded congressional ethics reform. And so, the newly appointed chairman of the Senate Rules Committee, Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., is now duly in charge of regulating the ethical behavior of her colleagues. But for many years, Feinstein has been beset by her own ethical conflict of interest, say congressional ethics experts.

As chairperson and ranking member of the Military Construction Appropriations subcommittee (MILCON) from 2001 through the end of 2005, Feinstein supervised the appropriation of billions of dollars a year for specific military construction projects. Two defense contractors whose interests were largely controlled by her husband, financier Richard C. Blum, benefited from decisions made by Feinstein as leader of this powerful subcommittee.

How convenient. I suspect the same “journalists” that keep harping on the non-existent conflict of interest with Dick Cheney will be quite silent on this clear conflict of interest.

Must be nice to have control over hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars that you can redirect at will to your spouse’s business ventures and investments…

Each year, MILCON’s members decide which military construction projects will be funded from a roster proposed by the Department of Defense. Contracts to build these specific projects are subsequently awarded to such major defense contractors as Halliburton, Fluor, Parsons, Louis Berger, URS Corporation and Perini Corporation. From 1997 through the end of 2005, with Feinstein’s knowledge, Blum was a majority owner of both URS Corp. and Perini Corp.

While setting MILCON agendas for many years, Feinstein, 73, supervised her own staff of military construction experts as they carefully examined the details of each proposal. She lobbied Pentagon officials in public hearings to support defense projects that she favored, some of which already were or subsequently became URS or Perini contracts. From 2001 to 2005, URS earned $792 million from military construction and environmental cleanup projects approved by MILCON; Perini earned $759 million from such MILCON projects.

In her annual Public Financial Disclosure Reports, Feinstein records a sizeable family income from large investments in Perini, which is based in Framingham, Mass., and in URS, headquartered in San Francisco. But she has not publicly acknowledged the conflict of interest between her job as a congressional appropriator and her husband’s longtime control of Perini and URS–and that omission has called her ethical standards into question, say the experts.

…and that’s not even half of the corrupt story. Read the whole article and see that it gets worse… much worse.

Yoo hoo, Madame Speaker… I think there’s a clog in your drain. Got drano?

The law breakers are being rounded up and sent home… and MSM coverage reads like a sob story.

The 21 Smithfield Packing Co. employees arrested by immigration officials while they worked Wednesday are in the process of being deported.

The 20 men and one woman arrested were moved Thursday from the Mecklenburg County Jail to Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Ga., nearly 700 miles from Tar Heel.

Meanwhile, church officials within the region’s Hispanic community and spokespeople with the United Food & Commercial Workers union said the workers’ families didn’t know where they were and other immigrant workers were terrified of more arrests.

…and the headline for this ridiculous article?

The ironic thing about it is that if they’d really stayed home… I mean their real home, they wouldn’t have to fear arrest for breaking the law now. This would be like a story sympathetically covering a group of bank robbers who are afraid to rob more banks after one of their own had been caught in the act. Forgive me for failing to care.

Of course, it’s not enough to just have one ridiculous article circulating in the liberal land of MSM, they’re popping up all over the country. Another headline reads:

Federal agents from seven teams also fanned out in local communities, where they nabbed 338 undocumented immigrants, more than 150 of whom were classed as “immigration fugitives” — foreign nationals who ignored final deportation orders.
…
“We hadn’t seen anything like this here before, and it came as a shock,” said Antonio Bernabe, a community worker who runs a day labor program at the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles.

First, we can dispense with the political correctness and call the criminals what they are: illegal aliens

Second, “this came as a shock”? Are you retarded? That’s like being surprised the sun rose this morning. I think the real surprise is that it’s taken so long for law enforcement officials to crack down on these law breakers.

At least someone’s gettin’ it:

“We used to feel secure here,” Nicaraguan electrician Manuel Salomon told Reuters as he sipped coffee in a Mexican bakery in the city. “But it looks like that honeymoon is over.”

Let’s hope so.

…when it comes to education. (hat tip: Matt)

Education Secretary Margaret Spellings said yesterday the administration will fight tenaciously for a few key changes to its signature education law, including helping children in chronically failed public schools to attend private schools instead.
…
Top Democrats, such as Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, chairman of the Senate education panel, immediately balked at the school-choice provisions, while indicating agreement in other areas. Democrats’ top goal is to secure a steep funding boost for the law, and Mrs. Spellings indicated the administration will use that as a bargaining chip.

And of course, the Democrats’ standard answer to anything…

In communities with several failing schools, the administration proposal also would offer scholarships for pupils to attend private schools.

Democrats have argued that these struggling schools need more money in order to meet the law’s tough requirements.

…just throw more money at the failing school.