Last week at a city council meeting in Allentown, Pa., a top official of the local Service Employees International Union chapter ranted about 17-year-old Scout Kevin Anderson's park cleanup work. Anderson devoted some 200 hours to the job in order to earn an Eagle Scout badge. He picked up trash and helped clear a 1,000-foot walking path with fellow members of Boy Scouts Troop 301 of Center Valley.

But...]]> Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0600 President Obama traveled all the way to China to praise the free flow of information. It's the only safe place he could do so without getting heckled. With a straight face, Obama lauded political dissent and told Chinese students he welcomed unfettered criticism in America. Fierce opposition, he said, made him "a better leader because it forces me to hear opinions that I don't want to hear." How do you say "You lie!" in Mandarin?

While the kowtower-in-chief's press shop feeds paeans to free speech into Obama's globetrotting teleprompter, the White House is still waging war on vocal foes at home. Obama has lectured his critics in Washington to stop talking and "get out of the way."...]]> Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0600 ACORN is doing what it does best: playing the victim, blaming everyone else for its self-inflicted wounds, perpetuating false narratives and defending the entitlement industry to the death.

On Thursday, the disgraced welfare rights organization filed suit over a congressional funding ban passed in September after nationwide undercover sting videos exposed ACORN's criminal element.

The group and its web of nonprofit, tax-exempt affiliates have collected an estimated $53 million in government funds since 1994. This pipeline is apparently a constitutionally protected right. According to ACORN's lawyers at the far-left Center for Constitutional Rights, the congressional funding...]]> Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0600 The violence at Fort Hood, President Obama told mourners on Tuesday, was "incomprehensible." The "twisted logic that led to the tragedy," he reiterated, may be "too hard to comprehend." If the Bush administration suffered a systemic failure of imagination on homeland security, the Obama administration is suffering a willful failure of comprehension.

What exactly is so hard to comprehend? Fort Hood jihadist Maj. Nidal Hasan made his means, motives and inspiration all too clear for those willing to see and hear. In his 2007 slide presentation to fellow Army doctors on "The Koranic World View As It Relates to Muslims in the Military," Hasan spelled it out: "We love death more then...]]> Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0600 In 2006, the minority party in Congress issued a dire report on the "unprecedented erosion of the democratic process." Democratic Rep. Louise Slaughter, then the ranking member of the House Rules Committee, authored the scathing document. She blasted the majority Republicans' violations of "procedural fairness," short-circuiting of debate, and late-night meetings "to discourage members and the press from participating" in legislative deliberations. My, how history repeats itself.

Fast-forward to 2009. The Imperial Congress has returned. The oppressed have become the oppressors. Democrats have met the enemy of deliberative democracy, and it is they.

Three years ago, the...]]> Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0600 Here is one of the loudest messages of the 2009 off-off-year elections: Conservatives in America will no longer let their opponents define them as outside of the mainstream. They will not submit to Democrats. Or to the media. Or to Beltway Republican capitulationists. They will not "rebrand." They will not sit down. They will not shut up.

Just this past weekend, Democratic Rep. Jim Moran attacked the Republican candidates for governor and attorney general in his state of Virginia as the "Taliban ticket."

New York Times columnist Frank Rich decried the right's "Jacobins" and "Stalinists" who he said joined a "putsch" by supporting Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman...]]> Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Like Capt. Renault in "Casablanca," I am shocked, shocked to discover that access peddling is going on in the Obama White House. Perks for deep-pocketed donors? Presidential meetings for sale? The stale Chicago odor of pay-for-play wafting from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue? Knock me over with a feather.

Despite the president's claimed distaste for the campaign finance practice known as "bundling" (rounding up aggregate contributions from friends, business associates and employees), the House of Obama has been a campaign finance bundlers' paradise from Day One. A new report by Matthew Mosk of The Washington Times just confirms the gob-smackingly obvious: It's business as usual in the...]]> Wed, 28 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500 The war on conservative speech has moved from the White House to your neighborhood pews. Left-wing church leaders want the Federal Communications Commission to crack down on "hate speech" over cable TV and right-leaning talk-radio airwaves. President Obama's speech-stifling bureaucrats seem all too happy to oblige.

Over the last week, an outfit called "So We Might See" has conducted a nationwide fast to protest "media violence" -- specifically, "anti-immigrant hate speech, which employs flawed arguments to appeal to fears rather than facts." Their ire is currently aimed at Fox News and conservative talk-show giants. But how long before they target ordinary citizens who call in to...]]> Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson of Florida has found his calling: death demagogue. First, he accused Republicans of wanting sick patients to "die quickly." Next, he likened health insurance problems to a "holocaust in America." Now, he's unveiled a new website entitled "namesofthedead.com" in memory of the "more than 44,000 Americans [who] die simply because they have no health insurance."

Just one problem: The statistic is a phantom number. Grayson's memorial, like the Democrats' government health care takeover plan itself, is full of vapor. It comes from a study published this year in the American Journal of Public Health. But the science is infused with left-wing...]]> Wed, 21 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Hollywood hearts Obama. Obama hearts government-directed national service. That is why you won't be able to change the TV channel all week without getting lectured about the need to get off the couch and Do Something. (After your favorite shows are over, of course.) Creeped out? You should be.

The entertainment industry, inspired by Obama's $6 billion expansion of government volunteerism spending, is coordinating plot lines and ads to push public service. "The message will be nearly ubiquitous," reports the Los Angeles Times, "starting in the morning with programs such as ‘Today' and ‘The View,' and then echoed on soap operas, prime-time series and late-night shows."...]]> Fri, 16 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Here's the dirty little secret about political candidates and officeholders labeled by the mainstream media as "moderate Republicans": There's usually nothing moderate about them. Consider the case of "moderate Republican" Dede Scozzafava, the GOP nominee in the New York 23rd congressional district's special election.

Handpicked by local party pooh-bahs and supported by Beltway GOP leaders, Scozzafava is vying to replace former GOP Rep. John McHugh, who abandoned his seat to accept President Obama's nomination as Army Secretary. There's certainly no urgency to tack left. The upstate New York district is as safe a Republican district as they come. The GOP has triumphed in every...]]> Wed, 14 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500 White House interim communications director Anita Dunn assumed the role of lead Fox News Channel-basher this weekend. The attack was a dud. The left-leaning Nation magazine ridiculed President Obama's press shop for turning him into the "whiner-in-chief." AOL media columnist Jeff Bercovici called the war on Fox a "loser's strategy" that "signals weakness." And that's the friendly fire.

Dunn found refuge in rival CNN's green zone, where she blasted Fox News as a "research arm of the Republican Party." Unhappy with headline-generating Fox News hosts who have wrested control of the news cycle from Team Obama, Dunn complained about "opinion journalism masquerading as...]]> Fri, 09 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500 There are serious problems with the administration of the U.S. census. Americans have good reason to be wary of the stranger's knock on the door. Unfortunately, anything critics say about the federal census can and will be used against them in the court of left-wing opinion.

First, the disturbing news about the government's most recent census travails: According to a new General Accounting Office report, botched fingerprinting by ill-trained employees led to the hiring of some 36,000 census workers with insufficient background checks. "More than 200" of those workers may have had serious criminal records, according to the GAO. The investigators revealed that: "of the prints that...]]> Wed, 07 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Lights, camera, agitprop! The curtains opened on yet another artfully staged performance of Obamacare Theater this week. One hundred and fifty doctors took their places on the plush lawn outside the West Wing -- many acting like "Twilight" groupies with cameras instead of credible medical professionals. The president approved the scenery: "I am thrilled to have all of you here today, and you look very spiffy in your coats."

White House wardrobe assistants guaranteed the "spiffy." As the New York Post's Charles Hurt reported, the physicians "were told to bring their white lab coats to make sure that TV cameras captured the image." President Obama's aides hastily handed out costumes...]]> Fri, 02 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500 It's hard out there for a first lady of the United States. Take it from travel-weary Michelle Obama. On Tuesday night, she boarded a luxury 757 for Copenhagen. Think of the stairs she had to climb. Oh, the agony of the feet!

Upon arrival, Mrs. O, her "chit-chat buddy," Chicago-based talk-show queen Oprah Winfrey, and Chicago powerbroker/interest-conflicted real estate mogul/senior White House adviser Valerie Jarrett immediately embarked on a grueling, grip-and-grin campaign to secure the Olympics for their hometown. Our smile muscles ache in sympathy.

You will be comforted to know that the gracious FLOTUS feels your pain for her pain. "As much of a sacrifice as people say...]]> Wed, 30 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0500 When government officials play the Olympic lottery, taxpayers lose. That has been the disastrous experience of host cities around the world. (Forbes magazine even dubbed the post-Olympic financial burden the "Host City Curse.") So, why are President Obama and his White House entourage headed to Copenhagen, Denmark, this week to push a fiscally doomed Chicago 2016 bid? Political payback.

Bringing the games to the Windy City is Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley's "vision." The entrenched Democratic powerbroker -- in office since 1989 -- would like to cap off his graft-haunted tenure with a glorious $4 billion bread-and-circuses production. The influential Daley machine backed Barack...]]> Wed, 23 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Terror suspect Najibullah Zazi has done us all a favor. But is it enough to rouse a nation in permanent snooze-button mode?

The arrest of Zazi, a Colorado-based Afghan airport shuttle driver who counterterrorism officials believe may have been plotting bomb attacks on New York City mass transit trains, raised alerts on rail lines across the country. A joint FBI-Department of Homeland Security assessment issued Monday warned law enforcement agencies about the use of improvised explosive devices against passenger trains overseas. Zazi was allegedly trained in manufacturing liquid explosives with hydrogen peroxide -- the same material used in the London subway attacks in 2005....]]> Fri, 18 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0500 There's one thing more shocking than the illegal alien smuggling advice that an ACORN official in San Diego gave undercover journalists James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles. It's the illegal alien home loan racket that ACORN has already been operating with the full knowledge of the U.S. government.

On Wednesday, O'Keefe and Giles published the fifth in a series of BigGovernment.com sting videos. ACORN official Juan Carlos Vera coached the pimp-and-prostitute-posing pair on how best to pull off a border-busting smuggling operation. It would be "better from Tijuana," he counseled on videotape. Vera then generously offered the investigative couple his Mexican "contacts" to bring 12 illegal...]]> Wed, 16 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Undercover journalism is only acceptable when it fits a liberal agenda. That is the message from "professional" reporters and left-wing activists outraged about three successful video stings targeting President Obama's old friends at the left-wing tax-subsidized outfit ACORN.

Conservative documentarian James O'Keefe and writer Hannah Giles, working for the BigGovernment.com website, posed as a pimp and prostitute during visits to ACORN offices in Baltimore, Washington, D.C., and Brooklyn.
ACORN housing officials and tax advisers offered them brazen suggestions on how to lie on their applications, disguise their income, obscure their child sex-ring business and hide cash from...]]> Fri, 11 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0500 New Delhi. Mumbai. Chechnya. Madrid. London. The question isn't whether America will suffer a jihadi attack on our passenger rail lines, but when. So, why has President Obama neutered the nation's most highly trained post-Sept. 11 counterterrorism rail security team?

All signs point to business-as-usual cronyism and pandering to power-grabbing union bosses.

Amtrak's Office of Security Strategy and Special Operations (OSSSO) grew out of a counterterrorism and intelligence unit developed by the Bush administration in the wake of global jihadi attacks on mass transit systems. The office was staffed with Special Forces veterans, law enforcement officers, railroad specialists,...]]> Wed, 09 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Tom Daschle is the human toe fungus of Washington -- a persistent infection that may disappear from time to time, but always comes back with a vengeance.

Despite abandoning his secretary of health and human services nomination in disgrace in February 2009, the K Street tax cheat who evaded IRS rules for years remains a top White House confidante and policy strategist. In fact, he's leading the drive to save Obamacare. He climbed up from under the bus back into the Oval Office and onto the sets of "Meet the Press" and "This Week With George Stephanopoulos" to offer his rescue plan.

It's Daschle's idea to morph the unpopular "public option" into nonprofit "health care co-ops"...]]> Fri, 04 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0500 They think we're crazy. "They" are the sneering defenders of Barack Obama who can't fathom the backlash against the president's nationwide speech to schoolchildren next Tuesday. "We" are parents with eyes wide open to the potential for politicized abuse in America's classrooms.

Ask moms and dads in Farmington, Utah, who discovered this week that their children sat through a Hollywood propaganda video promoting the cult of Obama. In the clip, a parade of entertainers vow to flush their toilets less, buy hybrid vehicles, end poverty and world hunger, and commit to "service" for "change." Actress Demi Moore leads the glitterati in a collective promise "to be a servant to our...]]> Wed, 02 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0500 "ABC" stands for All Barack's Children. On Sept. 8, young students across the country will be watching television. Yes, they'll be parked in front of boob tubes and computer screens watching President Obama's address on education.

Instead of practicing cursive, reviewing multiplication tables, diagramming sentences or learning something concrete, America's kids will be lectured about the importance of learning. And then the schoolchildren, from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade, will be exhorted to Do Something -- other than sit in their seats and receive academic instruction, that is.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan dispatched letters to principals nationwide, boasting,...]]> Fri, 28 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0500 How much more suffering does the Obama administration want to inflict upon American relatives of the Lockerbie bombing murder victims?

Watching Lockerbie terrorist Abdel Baset al-Megrahi walk free after serving a measly eight years of a life sentence was cruel enough. Next, Lockerbie families endured the despicable hero's welcome party thrown for Megrahi by Libyan thug Moammar Gadhafi. Soon after came reports that Megrahi, released by Scotland for "compassionate reasons" due to terminal prostate cancer diagnosed by a lone anonymous doctor, may not actually have less than three months to live.

And now? Now, the Lockerbie families must prepare for the sight of Gadhafi jetting...]]> Sun, 23 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Money from pharmaceutical firms and health care companies is dirty, evil and corrupting -- except when key members of Team Obama are pocketing it. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs derides grassroots opponents of socialized health care as industry-funded lackeys with questionable motives and conflicts of interest. But what about the corporate shills at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?

Two weeks ago, the White House embraced $150 million in drug industry ads supporting Obamacare. This week, Bloomberg News reported that White House senior adviser and chief campaign strategist David Axelrod's former public relations firm, AKPD Message and Media, has raked in some $24 million in ad...]]> Wed, 19 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Pay czar Kenneth Feinberg's official government title is "Special Master for Compensation." You'll be happy to know that he's really getting into the confiscatory spirit of his role. Asked by Reuters whether his powers include reaching back and revoking bonuses awarded to financial industry executives before his office was created earlier this year, Feinberg asserted broad and binding authorities -- including the ability to "claw back" money already paid out.

Regulations governing his office explicitly limit his jurisdiction over contracts signed before Feb. 11, 2009. But the fine print is no obstacle to Obama's czars. "The statute provides these guideposts, but the statute...]]> Fri, 14 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0500 The White House press office is now Miss Manners' office. President Obama's press secretary, Robert Gibbs, took to the television airwaves this week to criticize congressional town hall protesters for "yelling." Gibbs' underling, Bill Burton, chastised voters not to "disrupt" and "scream." Instead, he advised America to engage in a "spirited debate about health care, a real vigorous conversation about it."

What constitutes "spirited"? How do they define "vigorous"? When does forceful dissent become intolerable disruption? Herewith, the Obama Etiquette Czar's Official Rules for Patriotic Protest. Keep this guide with you at all times to avoid being flagged by the Democratic...]]> Wed, 12 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Who are the real thugs? Democrats attack congressional town hall protesters as "Brown Shirts" -- likening taxpayer activists across the country to Hitler's storm troopers. But it's the Big Labor hoodlums clad in identical purple shirts -- the uniform of Service Employees International Union members -- who own the mob label.

Margarida Jorge, a former SEIU organizing director who now serves as national field director for the deep-pocketed, left-wing coalition Health Care for America Now, sent out a memo to her foot soldiers last week on how to counter Obamacare opponents. "You must bring enough people to drown them out and to cover all our bases so as to marginalize their disruptive...]]> Fri, 07 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Czardom has its privileges. This week, President Obama's health care overlord, Nancy DeParle, launched a taxpayer-funded initiative to recruit an Internet Snitch Brigade that will combat "disinformation about health insurance reform." As the White House explained in a special online bulletin:

"These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain e-mails or through casual conversation. Since we can't keep track of all of them here at the White House, we're asking for your help. If you get an e-mail or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov."

What will health care czar DeParle do with this information?...]]> Wed, 05 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0500 The activist Left can't stand competition. Last week in Long Island, N.Y., opponents of the Democrats' government health care takeover legislation outnumbered Obama supporters 10 to one. The Tea Party activists toted American flags and signs that read "WE CAN'T AFFORD FREE HEALTH CARE" -- prompting one foe to stalk into the peaceful crowd, gesticulate wildly and shout unintelligible threats at the top of his lungs.

The same Democrat Masters of Astroturf who encouraged their followers to use "in-your-face" tactics during the campaign season now balk at vocal opposition from their fiscally conservative neighbors and co-workers. Obama's architects of Kabuki town halls have packed...]]> Fri, 31 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Everything you need to know about false Hope and Change can be found in one picture: the image of President Obama embracing embattled Sen. Chris Dodd.

The troubled Democrat is in deep over his sweetheart Countrywide home-loan deals, corporate bailout cash and crony associations. New revelations by Countrywide whistleblower Robert Feinberg confirm what more and more of Dodd's constituents in Connecticut are coming to realize: He's a lying weasel.

Dodd denied knowledge of the special treatment the subprime mortgage company had given him and Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad on home loans. (Dodd's were worth more than $800,000.) Feinberg flatly contradicted him in...]]> Wed, 29 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Six months into the Obama administration, it should now be clear to all Americans: Hope and Change came to the White House wrapped in brass knuckles.

Ask the Congressional Budget Office. Last week, President Obama spilled the beans on the "Today Show" that he had met with CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf -- just as the number crunchers were casting ruinous doubt on White House cost-saving claims. Yes, question the timing.

The CBO is supposed to be a neutral scorekeeper -- not a water boy for the White House. But when the meeting failed to stop the CBO from issuing more analysis undercutting the health care savings claims, Obama's budget director Peter Orszag played the...]]> Fri, 24 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius tried to reassure citizens in New Orleans this week that Obamacare bureaucrats will make sound medical decisions for all Americans. She failed. Under the government-run plan, she promised, a team of health care experts will recommend what should be covered: "I think it would be wise to let science guide what the best health care package is."

Gulp. It's the Obama administration's view of sound "science" that should send chills down patients' spines. Case in point: The president's prestigious science czar, John Holdren, refuses to answer questions about his radical published work on population control over the last 30...]]> Wed, 22 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Big Nanny Democrats want to ration health care for everyone in America -- except those who break our immigration laws. Last week, the House Ways and Means Committee defeated an amendment that would have prevented illegal aliens from using the so-called "public health insurance option." Every Democrat on the panel voted against the measure.

Nevada GOP Rep. Dean Heller's measure would have enforced income, eligibility and immigration verification screening on all Obamacare patients. Unlike most everything else stuffed into the House Democrats' plan, the citizenship vetting process would not have required building a new bureaucracy. Heller proposed using existing state and federal...]]> Fri, 17 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500 If you think government is too big and too costly, wait until Obamacare kicks in. The Congressional Budget Office put the price tag of the House Democrats' health care takeover plans at $1.5 trillion over 10 years. But the CBO's fine print included a telltale caveat:

"We have not yet estimated the administrative costs to the federal government of implementing the specified policies, nor have we accounted for all of the proposal's likely effects on spending for other federal programs."

You don't need an accounting degree or clairvoyant powers. The administrative costs and spillover spending effects will be astronomical. Look at existing federal programs. In 1966, the Office...]]> Wed, 15 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500 The New York Times recently warned its readers about a wacky scientist in the Obama administration. But the fish wrap of record let the real nut job off the hook.

Reporting last week on the president's choice to head the National Institutes of Health, Times writer Gardiner Harris noted that praise for Dr. Francis S. Collins "was not universal or entirely enthusiastic." The geneticist is causing "unease," according to the Times, because of "his very public embrace of religion." Stomachs are apparently churning over a book Collins wrote describing his conversion to Christianity.

It's called -- gasp! -- "The Language of God." Harris intoned: "Religion and genetic research have...]]> Fri, 10 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Let there be no doubt: Democrats are the party with two ideas: borrow and spend. The only vigorous internal debate on the left revolves around two questions: How much and how much more? Even as the first trillion-dollar stimulus craters, the debt-o-crats are floating yet another grand act of generational theft to create the illusion of jumpstarting the economy.

Call it Spawn of Spendulus. Return of the Porkulus Beast. Crap Sandwich Redux. White House economic adviser Laura D'Andrea Tyson told an international economic conference: "We should be planning on a contingency basis for a second round of stimulus." Team Obama flack Robert Gibbs says the president isn't "ruling anything...]]> Wed, 08 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Flags flew at half-staff this week in California's state Capitol. No, not for Michael Jackson. For Private First Class Justin Casillas.

Pfc. Casillas died in a suicide bombing attack on his Army base in eastern Afghanistan on the Fourth of July. While Americans enjoyed fireworks and Hollyweird mourned the "king of pop" with wretched excess, the family of Pfc. Casillas learned that the 19-year-old paratrooper with the U.S. Army's Alaska-based 509th Airborne had given his life for his country. His father told the Woodland (Calif.) Daily Democrat that Justin just "wanted to do his part."

The family has a legacy of service: Casillas' grandfather served in the Pacific theater...]]> Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Watchdogs are an endangered species in the Age of Obama. The latest government ombudsman to get the muzzle: Amtrak Inspector General Fred Weiderhold. The longtime veteran employee was abruptly "retired" this month -- just as the government-subsidized rail service faces mounting complaints about its meddling in financial audits and probes.

Question the timing? Hell, yes.

On June 18, Weiderhold met with Amtrak officials to discuss the results of an independent report by the Washington, D.C., law firm Willkie, Farr and Gallagher. The 94-page report has been made publicly available through the office of whistleblower advocate Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa. It concluded that the...]]> Fri, 26 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0500 The Obama administration doesn't want to hear inconvenient truths about global warming. And they don't want you to hear them, either. As Democrats rush on Friday to pass a $4 trillion, thousand-page "cap and trade" bill that no one has read, environmental bureaucrats are stifling voices that threaten their political agenda.

The free market-based Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington (where I served as a journalism fellow in 1995) obtained a set of internal e-mails exposing Team Obama's willful and reckless disregard for data that undermine the illusion of "consensus." In March, Alan Carlin, a senior research analyst at the Environmental Protection Agency, asked agency...]]> Wed, 24 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Wed, 24 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0500 If you believe the White House, there are 30 million Americans who support a government health care takeover. But if you look at the funding behind the Obamacare campaign, it's the same few leftist billionaires, union bosses and partisan community organizers pushing the socialized medicine agenda. Let's connect the dots.

On Thursday, a national "grassroots" coalition called Health Care for America Now (HCAN) will march on Capitol Hill to demand universal health care. The ground troops won't have to march very far. HCAN, you see, is no heartland network. It is headquartered at 1825 K Street in Washington, D.C. -- smack dab in the middle of Beltway lobby land.

In fact, 1825 K...]]> Fri, 19 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0500 The White House, Democrats and MoveOn liberals are spreading health care sob stories to sell a government takeover. But there's one health care policy nightmare you won't hear the Obamas hyping. It's a tale of poor minority patient-dumping in Chicago -- with first lady Michelle Obama's fingerprints all over it.

Both Republican Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa and Democratic Rep. Bobby Rush of Illinois have raised red flags about the outsourcing program run by the University of Chicago Medical Center. The hospital has nonprofit status and receives lucrative tax breaks in exchange for providing charity care.

Yet, in fiscal year 2007, when Mrs. Obama was employed there, it spent...]]> Wed, 17 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0500 President Obama promised he would end "Washington games." But his abrupt firing of the AmeriCorps inspector general is more of the same. The brewing scandal smells like the Beltway cronyism of the Bush years. And the apparent meddling of first lady Michelle Obama in the matter smacks of the corruption of the Clinton years.

If Obama keeps up with this "change," we'll be back to the Watergate era by Christmas.

News of AmeriCorps watchdog Gerald Walpin's unceremonious dismissal first broke last week in Youth Today, an independent national publication focused on the volunteerism sector. Walpin was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2007 and has served well, honorably and...]]> Fri, 12 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Will you teach your son to talk about women and girls the way you talk about Sarah Palin and her daughters?

You called the married 45-year-old mother, grandmother and Alaska governor a "slutty flight attendant" on your national TV talk show because she happens to be a tall, beautiful and dynamic public figure who doesn't look, walk or talk the way you think she should.

You joked on national television about Palin's teenage daughter "getting knocked up" by professional baseball player Alex Rodriguez or solicited by the prostitute-addicted former New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer because it's acceptable in your social and professional circles to sneer at the children of...]]>