Break the Filibuster

Finally, the article I've been waiting for. Concisely stated, the author devastates any who would otherwise claim. "Advise and Consent" does not mean 60% (as Jesse Jackson would put it!)...........T
"This is why the filibuster has historically not been used on nominations. This is the constitutional logic underlying 200-plus years of American political practice. This is why as recently as 14 years ago the possibility of filibustering Clarence Thomas, for example, was not entertained even by a hostile Democratic Senate that was able to muster 48 votes against him."

"Nuclear Option"

This guy pins it dead-on. It's what we face every day in the media age, and why the "Contract with America", even though mostly passed into law, ensured the re-election of the Crook (Bill Clinton).................T
"It's the media bias, stupid. Every time."

Is the GOP Heading for the Tall Grass Again?

No truer words were ever spoken. This man is a thinker, a great writer, a ...Crank of sorts. But he learned hardball politics by immersion in the 70's, at the right hand of Richard M. Nixon............T

"'I can't spare this man, he fights.'

So Abe Lincoln responded to critics of Gen. Grant, whose hard drinking was said to be scandalizing the Union cause.

Whatever may be said of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, he has fought more tenaciously for GOP principles, as he understands them, and for his party than any congressmen in the memory of this writer. "

Keep DeLay or pay the price

I've been away for a few days, as nothing peaked has my interest enough to post. This story, however, has it all. It speaks volumes about the nature of Power in D.C. (behind the scenes power), press bias, and human nature when the school yard is calling you names. We haven't changed that much since 3rd grade after all.......................T
"If a party can be stampeded by phony charges and a run of shoddy stories in whorish newspapers into dumping their most effective congressional leader, I wouldn't give 2 cents for their near-term future. A party that would voluntarily cut off its own testicles and FedEx them to their opponent as a trophy, is not likely to manifest any regenerative powers. That's the thing about losing those organs."

Desert Democrats of Mesopotamia

Nope, they'll get away with it scott-free...................T
"However they are managing it, the Iraqi politicians are moving deliberately and shrewdly toward the formation of a viable democratic government -- despite the jeering of the Washington pundits. For almost two years now, I have regularly appeared on television political talk shows with most of the Anti-Bush Brigade of Washington wise guys and gals. While many of them probably had never even heard of Sunnies, Shias and Kurds until the Iraq War, they all professed to be quite certain that these ancient divisions would surely lead Iraq into civil war after Bush's blunder of overturning Saddam.

Their beating hearts seemed to catch the rhythm of the insurgent's bomb blasts -- their countenances looking increasingly more satisfied as the pace of the bomb blasts and their predictions of civil war came into an unholy unison. Of course, disloyalty, defeatism and demagoguery were the farthest things from their minds. They were just reporting without fear or favor -- or facts. I'm sure they will be delighted at the impending success of the Iraqi people in forming a democratic government -- and how that will reflect well on our president -- and will promptly admit how wrong they have been these last two years."

Pope John Paul II

"A Great Man has passed"... and Charles Krauthammer and George Will are the two most gifted editorial writers of our generation.......C.K. is posted here.................T
"I find it hard not to suspect some providential hand at play when the white smoke went up at the Vatican 27 years ago and the Polish cardinal was chosen to lead the Catholic Church. Precisely at the moment the West most desperately needed it, we were sent a champion. It is hard to remember now how dark those days were. The 15 months following the pope's elevation marked the high tide of Soviet communism and the nadir of the free world's post-Vietnam collapse"

A Celebrant of Freedom

By George Will...enough said...........T
"In 1981 three of the world's largest figures : Ronald Reagan, Anwar Sadat and John Paul II : were shot. History would have taken an altered course if Sadat had not been the only one killed."

A Man for All Seasons

God Bless Karol Wojtyla. Pope John Paul II is dead. Ronald Reagan, Karol Wojtyla...Only Margaret Thatcher remains. Without all three of them, we could still be facing down a Soviet Empire to this day. Reagan had the vision and the leadership, Thatcher held the fort and bucked up the Western Europeans, and Pope John Paul II inspired revolt in Poland, striking fear into the Soviet Empire to such an extent that they tried to have him assassinated..........................T
"Pope John Paul II died today. In the post-Berlin Wall world this man did so much to shape, it's difficult to recall the much different circumstances that obtained when he assumed the chair of St. Peter. Former Italian prime minister Aldo Moro had been kidnapped and executed by terrorists. In Iran bloody protests were brewing that would within months pull down the Shah and usher in the ayatollahs. In the Soviet Union the dissident Anatoly Shcharansky (now the Israeli Natan Sharansky) was dispatched to the gulag, while Afghanistan had already endured the leftist coup that would, in short order, lead to a full-fledged Soviet invasion.
Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher were still in the future, and so was a workers' strike called by an unknown Pole named Lech Walesa. Everywhere one looked, the truth of the Brezhnev Doctrine seemed brutally self-evident: Once Communist, always Communist. Oh, yes: The Catholic Church which this first Slavic pope found himself bequeathed was thought by many to be hopelessly irrelevant to the crises of modern times."