The speech was titled "A Latina Judge's Voice" and offers a tremendous insight into her background and worldview, the latter apparently being that minority progress will be delayed until they are represented on the bench in proportion to their share of the populace.

The self-described "Newyorican" began by describing with fondness her roots as a "born and bred New Yorker of Puerto Rican-born...]]> Thu, 12 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Sedlacek then pulled a knife, stabbed two parishioners, and cut himself before congregants could restrain him.

Curious about what could have motivated Sedlacek's "death day," I went online to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Scanning the paper's Web site, I was surprised to find that the murder wasn't atop the list of most e-mailed stories.

No, that distinction belonged to a recipe for St. Louis Gooey Butter Cake.

"Be careful not to overbake it. If it isn't jiggly in the middle, it is overbaked. It will still taste great, but it won't be gooey," offered a brief item that accompanied the recipe. Overbaked? More like half-baked. And yet so symptomatic of the...]]> Thu, 26 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0600 The day's headlines hit on the hefty price tag: "Housing Bailout at $275 Billion" reported the Wall Street Journal, while "$275 Billion Plan Seeks to Address Crisis in Housing" led the front page of the New York Times.

That's also the day we met Rick Santelli.

Since 1999, Santelli has been providing CNBC with financial reports from the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade. Last week, he launched a rant that immediately made headlines of its own.

"The government is promoting bad behavior," Santelli said of the president's plan, and suggested a referendum to decide whether to "subsidize the losers' mortgages" or reward "people who can carry the water instead of drink the...]]> Thu, 19 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0600 Sure, on the president's side you have some serious expertise.

Consider Larry Summers, director of the National Economic Council, former Treasury secretary and one of the youngest tenured professors in Harvard history, who said the stimulus package was necessary to avert "a vortex of declining employment, falling incomes, reduced spending, increased financial distress, less lending, reduced employment, reduced spending, and so forth."

The list goes on. About 200 prominent economists, including a dozen Nobel laureates, signed a petition pledging support for the stimulus package. Paul Krugman, himself a Nobel economics winner, has called for an even bigger government footprint...]]> Sun, 25 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0600 His actions came as no surprise. Candidate Obama made clear his opposition to harsh interrogation techniques. And in his second full day of office, the president also signed an executive order to close Guantanamo.

I hope the president reconsiders. No one, including me, is "for" torture. But let's evaluate that option with common sense in the context of limited information published about actual implementation.

One well-documented case is that of Mohammed, who continues to boast of his role in murdering 3,000 innocents.

Logic dictates that those assigned to question Mohammed were our most skilled interrogators. If those individuals could procure information from Mohammed...]]> Thu, 09 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0500 Sun, 01 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0500