"Bush administration gave aggression a bad name, but sometimes it’s ok to be aggressive".

So a law professor, a Nobel Prize winning physicist, and an oil executive walk into a bar…Stop me if you’ve heard this one. It’s the story of President Obama, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, and Big Oil.

On Friday, a host on CNBC and a senior White House official personally reminded me that President Obama consulted with numerous advisers before deciding on his response to the oil spill. These advisers included oil company executives, leaders of environmental agencies, and many scientists—including the Nobel laureate, Dr. Chu.

It was important to bring the environmental agencies to the table so that the White House could mitigate this ecological Chernobyl with a strong, coordinated effort.

It was smart to bring the Secretary of Energy to the table for political and regulatory reasons.

It was right to bring the oil companies to the table, too, because the U.S. government does not possess the oil-related equipment and expertise that countries like Venezuela and Brazil control within their nationalized deep-water oil industries.

But there was one person missing from this A-list of extraordinary advisors: Joe the Plumber. Where was the pragmatic, no-nonsense blue-blooded American who could look President Obama and Chu in the eye and tell them to stop over-thinking this underwater plumbing problem, and furthermore, not to trust BP? Would you send a lawyer and a physicist to fix your plumbing? And would you trust an oil company executive to give you a fair deal?

We should have demolished this well with explosives over a month ago. And yet we watch in excruciating suspense while BP fumbles through plan after plan to recover its oil and cover its asset.

The president has set up an independent commission for investigating the accident before the spill is even stopped. How can we be so far-sighted as to miss the obvious things right before us? Establishing a commission before stopping the spill is like calling an attorney to file a lawsuit the moment after being run over by a truck. (Continues here)

It rained on his parade! Sad day for the Pres., his prompters got wet!

Torrential rain, lightning, thunder and strong winds forced President Barack Obama to delay a Memorial Day speech at the Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery in Illinois.

Obama took the stage at midday under the cover of a large umbrella to tell thousands of people who came to hear him speak that "a little rain never hurt anybody but we don't want anybody struck by lightning."

He asked people to return to their cars for safety.

Obama waited out the storm in the cemetery's administration building. He later boarded a pair of buses to greet military families that came for the ceremony.

Obama spoke at the Lincoln cemetery in 2005 when he was a U.S. senator. Lincoln created the system of national cemeteries during the Civil War. (Source)

National media traveling to Wasilla to see fence!

The “Today” show called Friday morning saying it plans to come up Monday and do some interviews about the fence Todd and Sarah Palin built on their property on Lake Lucille.

According to people who care about those things, the former governor wrote on her Facebook account that she was worried about the neighbor, Joe McGinnis, moving in. He’s the author of several books, one of which is an alleged non-fiction story about his exploits in Alaska titled “Going to Extremes.” That was published in 1980. It was a bible for all those who dreamed of moving here or were in the process. Local press wasn’t too kindly to it at the time, saying he missed a lot and exaggerated the rest.

Observers from Outside get that a lot.

McGinnis also wrote last year a fairly scathing article for Portfolio magazine — which no longer exists — about Palin’s plans, or not, for a gas pipeline.

So it’s not surprising she might be a little leery about her new neighbor.

Again, that happens a lot around here, regardless of notoriety.

Fences are built by people who want to keep their privacy or keep out the sight of their neighbors’ unsightly yards.

So the call from “Today,” quickly followed by a similar call from ABC news, seemed curious. The day before it was another national news outlet wanting to know if we had a photograph of the fence. There was an e-mail from Outside asking if the Palins were in compliance with city code. Another note suggested we assign someone to trace every move McGinnis makes while here and write a book about him to counter his about Palin.

Maybe we’re out of step here, but the unanimous consensus of the newsroom is that we don’t really care if the Palins want some privacy from what they worry might be prying eyes.

Fences have been known to make good neighbors and everybody knows we could use a lot more of those around here. So if the fence keeps McGinnis on one side and the Palins content, why would the “Today” show or ABC care?

Finally, those who are fond of Joe McGinnis might remind him (if he doesn’t already know) that Alaska has a law that allows the use of deadly force in protection of life and property. (Source)

Note: Thanks to Conservatives4Palin for this information and link

Netanyahu cancels trip to White House

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has canceled plans to meet U.S. President Barack Obama in Washington on Tuesday, an Israeli statement said, in the wake of a deadly Israeli raid on Gaza-bound ships.

"Netanyahu decided to cut short his visit to Canada and return to Israel early," the statement said on Monday. Netanyahu has been in Canada since Friday for talks with government leaders. (Source)

Israeli soldiers kill at least 10 protesters on boat carrying supplies to Gaza

Liberal press on keeping us safe: "How Many Warnings Do They Need?"

Some of the Sept. 11 commission’s most glaring warnings about gaps in homeland security continue to be ignored six years after they were hailed as indispensable to the defense against terrorism.

Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, the chairman and vice chairman of the commission, recently reminded the nation of crucial unfinished business. Perhaps most mind-boggling in these days of relentless communications is the continuing inability of first responders to communicate with each other on common radio frequencies. Police officers and firefighters lost their lives in the attack on New York City precisely because of that.

Congress also has failed to improve its oversight of government intelligence by cutting back on the cacophony of 100-plus committees claiming jurisdiction. The risk that a terrorist might unleash toxic clouds endangering hundreds of thousands of lives is nearly as great today as it was before the 2001 attacks.

Instead of adopting strict, mandatory security measures, Congress, so far, has failed even to renew a list of voluntary precautions due to expire in October.

The House passed a measure in November to renew the law but narrowed the categories of companies required to consider safer technologies and report their status to homeland security officials. A companion measure is in the works by Senator Frank Lautenberg, Democrat of New Jersey, but it has not surfaced on the chamber’s priority list as time dwindles. Senate failure to act will roll the issue over to start from scratch in the next Congress.

Some companies, like Clorox, have been exemplary in reducing risks by phasing out chlorine gas with a safer substitute. But most companies have refused to follow. The risks here are too high to ignore. Voluntary compliance is not enough. In addition, the environmental watchdog Greenpeace points out that homeland security safeguards on the nation’s 2,400 drinking water and waste-water treatment plants, many of which use chlorine gas, are exempt from the rules.

The threat of attacks on the homeland is real and present. The nation has gotten lucky twice in recent months when attempts to bring down a plane over Detroit and to explode a bomb in Times Square failed. If that luck runs out, the nation is going to be asking why Washington hasn’t done more. The White House and Congress should be asking those questions, and addressing these gaps, right now. (SOURCE: NEW YORK TIMES)

David Gergen: Mr. President, take command

Enough is enough! After the latest failure by BP to plug the gaping hole, it is time for President Obama to take full command of this growing national catastrophe. Immediately!

The president in his press conference this past Thursday assured the nation that he and his administration were already in charge and he has manfully taken personal responsibility -- "the buck stops here," he said, echoing Harry Truman. Well, it may be true that BP has been acting all along under the oversight of the federal government, but that supervision has been loose and ineffective.

To the world, it has been apparent that the government has been riding shotgun and BP has been at the wheel. It's time for the White House to get in the driver's seat and get us to safety -- fast.

First off, who can now trust BP to do the job right? From the beginning, it has appeared to be more interested in shoring up its stock price than in playing straight and solving the problem. It took reckless short cuts in opening up the rig, had no serious plan in place for a disaster, low-balled early estimates of the spill, has high-balled its chances of stopping the leak and has kept both the government and the public too much in the dark. And its efforts on shore are increasingly pathetic -- can it really have failed to protect the safety of beach workers and have stage managed the clean-up when Obama was there, as reported? It was a mistake to leave our fate in the hands of this company as long as we have.

Second, even if BP were reliable, the problem has clearly become too big for it to handle, as Colin Powell is now arguing on television. We have been told for days that the top kill procedure was BP's best hope for stopping the leak and if that failed, we would likely have to wait until BP drilled new wells which might be as late as August. We can't wait that long. BP is especially not up to the task of protecting our precious shorelines and cleaning up the beaches. For that, we need the organizational strength of the U.S. military.

Third, this catastrophe is increasingly threatening the nation's welfare. With a potentially dangerous storm season just around the corner, a continuing gush of oil will not only pose huge, long-term damage to the Gulf region but could easily wash the oil around the tip of Florida and up the East Coast. The loss to livelihoods, the economy and to ways of life would be immeasurable. It would be worse than Katrina and Exxon Valdez put together. Unless we solve this soon, this spill could do to off-shore drilling what Three Mile Island did to nuclear power -- darn near kill it. Obama is right that it is a wake-up call to end our addiction to oil, but we need some forms of off-shore oil as a bridge to that future.

Finally, Obama's leadership is increasingly at stake in this emergency. I thought Peggy Noonan was premature in arguing in the Wall Street Journal this weekend that the spill has already broken his presidency, but her column certainly gave pause. The cameras down at the bottom of the sea give us vivid reminders that this oil is spewing forth day after day after day -- almost like the daily television reminders we had of how long our hostages were held in Teheran while Jimmy Carter sat helplessly in the White House, the authority leaking out of his presidency.

What can the White House do? For starters:

-- Set up a daily command center in Washington where a presidentially appointed leader runs the show, calls the shots, coordinates the overall effort, briefs the president and briefs the country

-- Have two deputies, one to direct the leak-stoppage and the other to direct the clean-up. Ex-CEOs and generals would be excellent candidates

-- Summon all the major oil and drilling companies to the White House for emergency efforts to get the hole plugged

-- Get BP out of the picture for clean-up; just send it the bill. If it is still needed for hole-plugging, okay, but ensure that it answers every day to directions from the government. If BP needs new internal leadership, figure out how to get that done

-- Employ the U.S. military for organizational coordination and where needed, for anything else such as clean-up

-- Make more aggressive efforts to tap the best minds in the world for help

-- Provide the country with the kind of daily briefings that the military has mastered for wartime -- bring in people who are smart, straight and tough

-- Ensure that economic assistance is provided to families, small businesses and communities that need it with dispatch and generosity

-- Call off the finger pointing until we get out of this mess

-- And finally, very importantly, exercise the powers of leadership every day from the Oval Office

The whole country now has a keen interest in the White House now taking full command. Mr. President, it's your move. The nation cannot afford to wait that long -- the government needs to summon all the big oil and drilling companies to the White House on an emergency basis and seek faster answers. (Source CNN)

Maureen Dowd: President Spock’s behavior is illogical.

Once more, he has willfully and inexplicably resisted fulfilling a signal part of his job: being a prism in moments of fear and pride, reflecting what Americans feel so they know he gets it.

“This president needs to tell BP, ’I’m your daddy,’ “ scolded James Carville, a New Orleans resident, as he called Barack Obama’s response to Louisiana’s new watery heartbreak “lackadaisical.”

At a press conference, Obama said Malia had asked him, as he shaved, “Did you plug the hole yet, Daddy?” (That hole should be plugged with a junk-shot of Glenn Beck, who crudely mocked the adorable Malia.) Oddly, the good father who wrote so poignantly about growing up without a daddy scorns the paternal aspect of the presidency.

In the campaign, Obama’s fight flagged to the point that his donors openly upbraided him. In the Oval, he waited too long to express outrage and offer leadership on A.I.G., the banks, the bonuses, the job loss and mortgage fears, the Christmas underwear bomber, the death panel scare tactics, the ugly name-calling of Tea Party protesters.

Too often it feels as though Barry is watching from a balcony, reluctant to enter the fray until the clamor of the crowd forces him to come down. The pattern is perverse. The man whose presidency is rooted in his ability to inspire withholds that inspiration when it is most needed.

Oblivious to warnings about Osama hitting the U.S. and Katrina hitting New Orleans, W. often seemed more absorbed in workouts than work. Obama, by contrast, does his homework; he conveys a rare and impressive grasp of difficult subjects when he at last deigns to talk to the news media and reassure those whose lives are overturned by disaster.

The wound-tight, travel-light Obama has a distaste for the adversarial and the random. But if you stick too rigidly to a No Drama rule in the White House, you risk keeping reality at bay. Presidencies are always about crisis management.

Obama invented himself against all odds and repeated parental abandonment, and he worked hard to regiment his emotions. But now that can come across as imperviousness and inflexibility. He wants to run the agenda; he doesn’t want the agenda to run him. Once you become president, though, there’s no way to predict what your crises will be.

F.D.R. achieved greatness not by means of imposing his temperament and intellect on the world but by reacting to what the world threw at him.

For five weeks, it looked as though Obama considered the gushing that became the worst oil spill in U.S. history a distraction, like a fire alarm going off in the middle of a law seminar he was teaching. He’ll deal with it, but he’s annoyed because it’s not on his syllabus.

Even if Obama doesn’t watch “Treme” on HBO, it’s strange that he would not have a more spontaneous emotional response to another horrendous hit for Louisiana, with residents and lawmakers crying on the news and dead pelicans washing up on shore. But then, he didn’t make his first-ever visit to New Orleans until nearly a year after Katrina hit. “I never had occasion to be here,” he told The Times’s Jeff Zeleny, then at The Chicago Tribune.

Just as President Clinton once protested to reporters that he was still “relevant,” President Obama had to protest to reporters last week that he has feelings.

He seemed to tune out a bit after the exhausting battle over health care, with the air of someone who says to himself: “Oh, man, that was a heavy lift. I’m taking a break.”

He’s spending the holiday weekend in Chicago when he should be commemorating Memorial Day here with the families of troops killed in battle and with veterans at Arlington Cemetery.

Republican senators who had a contentious lunch with the president last week described him as whiny, thin-skinned and in over his head, and there was extreme Democratic angst at the White House’s dilatory and deferential attitude on the spill.

Even more than with the greedy financiers and arrogant carmakers, it was important to offend and slap back the deceptive malefactors at BP.

Obama and top aides who believe in his divinity make a mistake to dismiss complaints of his aloofness as Washington white noise. He treats the press as a nuisance rather than examining his own inability to encapsulate Americans’ feelings.

“The media may get tired of the story, but we will not,” he told Gulf Coast residents when he visited on Friday. Actually, if it weren’t for the media, the president would probably never have woken up from his torpor and flown down there.(Continues here at NYT)

Over the last 16 months Obama has shown that he is overmatched by events

In their book "The Battle for America 2008," Haynes Johnson and Dan Balz wrote this:

[Chief political aide David] Axelrod also warned that Obama's confessions of youthful drug use, described in his memoir, Dreams From My Father, would be used against him. "This is more than an unpleasant inconvenience," he wrote. "It goes to your willingness and ability to put up with something you have never experienced on a sustained basis: criticism. At the risk of triggering the very reaction that concerns me, I don't know if you are Muhammad Ali or Floyd Patterson when it comes to taking a punch. You care far too much what is written and said about you. You don't relish combat when it becomes personal and nasty. When the largely irrelevant Alan Keyes attacked you, you flinched," he said of Obama's 2004 U.S. Senate opponent.

I thought of this memo after reading the comment by Sen. Pat Roberts after he and other Senate Republicans had a contentious 80-minute meeting with the president on Tuesday. "He needs to take a Valium before he comes in and talks to Republicans," Roberts said. "He's pretty thin-skinned."

Sen. Roberts is being too generous. Obama is among the most thin-skinned presidents we have had, and we see evidence of it in every possible venue imaginable, from one-on-one interviews to press conferences, from extemporaneous remarks to set speeches.
The president is constantly complaining about what others are saying about him. He is upset at Fox News, and conservative talk radio, and Republicans, and people carrying unflattering posters of him. He gets upset when his avalanche of faulty facts are challenged, like on health care. He gets upset when he is called on his hypocrisy, on everything from breaking his promise not to hire lobbyists in the White House to broadcasting health care meetings on C-SPAN to not curtailing earmarks to failing in his promises of transparency and bipartisanship.
In Obama's eyes, he is always the aggrieved, always the violated, always the victim of some injustice. He is America's virtuous and valorous hero, a man of unusually pure motives and uncommon wisdom, under assault by the forces of darkness.
It is all so darn unfair.
Not surprisingly, Obama's thin skin leads to self pity. As Daniel Halper of The Weekly Standard pointed out, in a fundraising event for Sen. Barbara Boxer, Obama said,

Let's face it: this has been the toughest year and a half since any year and a half since the 1930s.

Really, now? Worse than the period surrounding December 7, 1941 and September 11, 2001? Worse than what Gerald Ford faced after the resignation of Richard Nixon and Watergate, which constituted the worse constitutional scandal in our history and tore the country apart? Worse than what Ronald Reagan faced after Jimmy Carter (when interest rates were 22 percent, inflation was more than 13 percent, and Reagan faced something entirely new under the sun, "stagflation")? Worse than 1968, when Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. were assassinated and there was rioting in our streets? Worse than what LBJ faced during Vietnam -- a war which eventually claimed more than 58,000 lives? Worse than what John Kennedy faced in the Bay of Pigs and in the Cuban Missile Crisis, when we and the Soviet Union edged up to the brink of nuclear war? Worse than what Franklin Roosevelt faced on the eve of the Normandy invasion? Worse than what Bush faced in Iraq in 2006, when that nation was on the edge of civil war, or when the financial system collapsed in the last months of his presidency? Worse than what Truman faced in defeating imperial Japan, in reconstructing post-war Europe, and in responding to North Korea's invasion of South Korea?(Continues here)

"He Was Supposed to Be Competent"

I don't see how the president's position and popularity can survive the oil spill. This is his third political disaster in his first 18 months in office. And they were all, as they say, unforced errors, meaning they were shaped by the president's political judgment and instincts.

There was the tearing and unnecessary war over his health-care proposal and its cost. There was his day-to-day indifference to the views and hopes of the majority of voters regarding illegal immigration. And now the past almost 40 days of dodging and dithering in the face of an environmental calamity. I don't see how you politically survive this.

The president, in my view, continues to govern in a way that suggests he is chronically detached from the central and immediate concerns of his countrymen. This is a terrible thing to see in a political figure, and a startling thing in one who won so handily and shrewdly in 2008. But he has not, almost from the day he was inaugurated, been in sync with the center. The heart of the country is thinking each day about A, B and C, and he is thinking about X, Y and Z. They're in one reality, he's in another.

The American people have spent at least two years worrying that high government spending would, in the end, undo the republic. They saw the dollars gushing night and day, and worried that while everything looked the same on the surface, our position was eroding. They have worried about a border that is in some places functionally and of course illegally open, that it too is gushing night and day with problems that states, cities and towns there cannot solve.

And now we have a videotape metaphor for all the public's fears: that clip we see every day, on every news show, of the well gushing black oil into the Gulf of Mexico and toward our shore. You actually don't get deadlier as a metaphor for the moment than that, the monster that lives deep beneath the sea.

In his news conference Thursday, President Obama made his position no better. He attempted to act out passionate engagement through the use of heightened language—"catastrophe," etc.—but repeatedly took refuge in factual minutiae. His staff probably thought this demonstrated his command of even the most obscure facts. Instead it made him seem like someone who won't see the big picture. The unspoken mantra in his head must have been, "I will not be defensive, I will not give them a resentful soundbite." But his strategic problem was that he'd already lost the battle. If the well was plugged tomorrow, the damage will already have been done. (Continues here at WSJ by Peggy Noonan)

'Top Kill' Fails to Stop Flow of Oil From Gulf Leak

BP PLC has abandoned its effort to plug a mile-deep oil and gas gusher in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico by injecting drilling fluids after failing to stem the flow of hydrocarbons.

"We have been unable to overcome the flow from the well," said BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles, in a press briefing. "We now believe it is time to move on to the next of our options," he said, adding it wasn't clear exactly why the so-called top-kill procedure started on Wednesday failed to stem the flow of oil.

Engineers will now attempt to contain the flow of oil from the leak with a so called lower marine riser package, or LMRP, cap. This operation would involve removing a broken drilling pipe that lies atop the failed blowout preventer and cap the valve with a siphon that will take the oil to the surface. Mr. Suttles said the LMRP cap procedure would take four to seven days. The LMRP cap is a newly made version of a device formerly referred to as a "top hat."

"The next thing to do is to capture all of the flow or as much of the flow as we can," he said, adding BP "has a lot of confidence" in the LMRP cap, but couldn't guarantee success. "We believe the LMRP cap has the potential to capture the great majority of (the leaking oil)." (Continues here at WSJ)

Prominent Democratic strategist came out in defense of Sarah Palin

A prominent Democratic strategist came out in defense of Sarah Palin on Friday, blasting a journalist who moved next door to the former Republican vice presidential candidate as having “crossed the line.”

Mo Elleithee, a lead spokesman for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, argued in POLITICO’s Arena that Palin and her family deserved privacy in their home. Palin announced on her Facebook page earlier this week that investigative reporter Joe McGinniss, who is writing a book on Palin, is renting out a home next door to her Wasilla, Alaska, home.

“I am no Sarah Palin fan. But on this, she is absolutely right,” Elleithee said in POLITICO’s Arena. “No public official should have to worry about a voyeuristic journalist peering into their backyard and kitchen window every day.”

Palin took several shots at McGuinniss on Fox News host Glenn Beck’s radio show earlier this week, saying the journalist’s move up north has made her nervous about her children’s privacy.

“Do your thing,” she said to McGuinniss on Beck’s show. “But keep your distance and you better leave my kids alone.”

(SOURCE)

Liberal Jerry Springer praises Sarah Palin

In a gab session with PopEater's resident political junkie, the liberal Springer warned against looking down on his oft-abhorrent talk show guests and gave his unvarnished opinion of fellow politician-turned-TV star Sarah Palin. Will she run in '12? You betcha!

So I wanted to chat about someone you have a little in common with: Sarah Palin. She's also a former lawmaker who pivoted to television. Could she hack it with her own talk show?
Well, she's incredibly charismatic. Her politics are different than mine. But I don't belittle her. She represents a significant segment of America. It might not be the majority, but certainly a significant segment of America that lives her lifestyle and believes as she does. And therefore, I can disagree with her without making fun of her. And for those of us who are more liberal, we step on dangerous ground when we try to belittle her, or belittle her fundamentalism, or religion or stuff like that, saying you know she is backwoods or stuff like that. That is how liberals come across as elitists or snobs.

Palin is viewed as a woman of the people; easy to relate to.
She's obviously got something going. Just look at the reaction! It wasn't just her 15 minutes of fame. It's lasted. She touches a nerve for people who resent being looked down upon. And there is a significant segment of America that feels it is being looked down upon. I think that's dangerous. It's where people who are liberal can get into trouble. So, I respect her. I disagree with her. But I have nothing bad to say about her. And I am sure anything she does in the media will be successful. She's got that "whatever that is" that makes you pay attention.

As a keen observer of the media and politics, does it seem she's gearing up for a 2012 run?
I think it would be naive to believe she wasn't thinking about running for president. She'll read the tea leaves and figure it out and figure whether she can win the GOP nomination. Winning the general will be tougher. But you know, who knows? Ten years ago, who would have said that we would have an African American in the White House? World events happen, things come to pass. Is it possible? Sure. Does she think about it? Of course she does. I can't imagine she doesn't. (Source)

Bristol Palin's Solo Act

After weathering scrutiny as a pregnant teenager during her mother's vice-presidential campaign, the independent single mother is forging her own path. See the Bristol Palin photo shoot.

By Elisa Lipsky-Karasz - Harper's Bazaar

It's a Saturday afternoon in Anchorage, and the only sign of spring is the gentle drip of melting snowdrifts. Parked under leafless trees behind Bristol Palin's three-story gray townhouse is a cluster of giant SUVs and pickup trucks. I didn't vote for this Obamanation, reads one bumper sticker. Another features a photo of the former Alaskan governor: Don't blame me, I voted for Sarah Palin.

Inside, the real live Sarah Palin is taking a break from her Tea Partying tour of the country to celebrate the second birthday of her son Trig, who has Down syndrome, with the entire extended Palin clan. She's just jetted in from Minnesota and is wearing an ensemble that reads off-duty celebrity — all black with an army-green newsboy cap pulled low over her eyes. Under her makeup, she looks a little tired, but her Alaskan charm is in full effect.

"Have some cake," she trills, standing next to a happy-birthday sign hand-lettered by Bristol, who is watching her 15-month-old son, Tripp, play with Trig, his two-year-old uncle. We have entrée into this cozy family scene because Bristol herself texted an invite. No flacks, no lawyers, no managers — it's a world away from the media glare of the 2008 presidential campaign, when the McCain-Palin ticket dropped the bombshell that the then high school senior was five months pregnant.

Later, the rosy-cheeked 19-year-old, dressed down in cropped cargo pants and a maroon pullover, says she remembers that moment all too clearly. "It was kind of humiliating," she sighs as she clears boxes of pizza and bowls of Doritos and Skittles. "Great, I'm 17 years old, I'm 40 pounds overweight with a big belly on me, all my friends are at school watching this on the news. This kind of sucks."

Bristol never expected to find herself here: waking up at 5:00 a.m. to fix Tripp's breakfast (usually eggs), get herself ready — "It takes me so much longer with a baby, it's not even funny" — then head to work from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. as a medical assistant in a dermatologist's office. "I thought I would be somewhere warm at college with my friends," she says. "But that was definitely not possible with having Tripp."

This workaday life is interrupted when Bristol steps into her other shoes, as an ambassador for the Candie's Foundation, which combats teenage pregnancy. (She has been compensated for some appearances.) One day she might be shopping at Costco, and the next marketing abstinence on Oprah, Good Morning America, or the Today show.

But Bristol is hardly unhappy, despite her hectic schedule and lack of sleep. "I love my baby more than anything," she says, which is obvious from the cuddles he gets. "He's like a Gerber baby. He's the cutest baby in the whole world."

She's also fiercely proud of her newly purchased condo. (Before she bought it, she and Tripp were living at home in Wasilla, an hour and a half away.) Though her mother's earnings have been widely reported at $12 million since she stepped down as governor last July, largely due to her book, Going Rogue, and her TV deals, it's Bristol who has picked out and paid for everything: the big leather couches, the flat-screen TVs, Tripp's toddler-size bed (though he sleeps with his mother), and the Subaru wagon in the garage. "I'm on my own," she says, in between constant texting on her BlackBerry. "I'm really proud of it. I'm a hard worker."

Her older brother Track's girlfriend, Britta, currently lives in the third bedroom, and her 15-year-old sister, Willow, often sleeps over. "I was scared to live by myself," Bristol explains. She has a point. Her neighborhood is not the picturesque wilderness many associate with Alaska; it's a modest cluster of homes halfway between Ted Stevens International Airport and the Great Alaskan Bush Company, where the wildlife accepts tips.

Not that Bristol goes out much, besides taking Tripp for walks. "I don't ever have time for friends or anything like that," she sighs. "It's just like, Right, crap, there is a hockey game tonight that I want to go to but I can't. Or, I do have to go to work today, because I've got bills to pay." (Continues here)

Public opinion turning against Obama on oil spill

The American public is losing its patience with President Obama over his handling of the Gulf Coast oil spill.

In the five weeks since an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig sent hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico, Obama had largely escaped political fallout. But as BP attempts yet again to seal the leak, a new USA Today/Gallup Poll finds a majority of Americans unhappy with Obama's handling of the spill. According to the poll, 53 percent rate Obama's handling "poor" or "very poor"; 43 percent believe Obama is doing a good job.

Yet the poll also finds that the public tends to blame others in the mess more than it blames the White House. Asked  broadly about the federal government's role, 60 percent rated the response "poor." BP got the lowest marks: 73 percent of Americans gave the company's handling of the spill a "poor" rating. Still, a whopping 68 percent say BP should remain in charge of the cleanup.

More than two-thirds of respondents called the gulf spill a "disaster," and of them, 37 percent considered it the "worst disaster in 100 years." Yet 52 percent of registered voters still support offshore drilling. That number is slightly down compared with other polls in recent weeks, including an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll this month in which nearly 60 percent of voters still agreed with offshore drilling.

What will no doubt give the White House pause is the shifting public sentiment on Obama's handling of the spill. Earlier this month, the president seemed to be escaping most of the public wrath over the disaster. An Associated Press poll released May 13 found mostly good-to-neutral marks for Obama's role in the mess: 42 percent approved, 33 percent disapproved and 21 percent said they were neutral.

But with the leak still unplugged and the economic and environmental impact only worsening, the White House has increasingly come under fire for not doing enough to handle the cleanup and control the spill. That includes criticism both from Republicans including Sarah Palin, who tried to make an issue of BP's donations to Obama's presidential campaign, and Democratic allies like James Carville, who slammed Obama for being too "hands off." (Continues)

Throughout oil spill catastrophe, Obama has found time to play golf, attend political fundraisers and state dinners

President Barack Obama is sticking with his philosophy of presidential multi-tasking, refusing to scrub his schedule of events that seem peripheral — even trivial — compared to unfolding catastrophe in the Gulf.

As oozing oil fouls Louisiana’s marshes, Obama has committed to maintaining the semblance of a regular schedule, adhering to his walk-and-chew-gum style of crisis management even as criticism of his administration mounts.

That includes a sit-down to talk hoops with Marv Albert, events touting the stimulus and Duke’s basketball team, a Memorial Day parade appearance in Illinois and a pair of fundraisers in California that roughly overlapped with a memorial service for 11 workers killed in the April 20th explosion on the Deepwater Horizon platform.

The White House is stands behind its walk-and-chew-gum-at-the-same-time mantra — but allies and enemies are puzzled over why Obama isn’t projecting more of a sense of urgency and outrage.

“I think this is one of the great lost political opportunities I’ve ever seen,” says former Clinton adviser James Carville, a Louisiana native sharply criticized the Obama administration’s response to the spill.

Obama earned high marks – and perhaps the presidency — for keeping his cool during the 2008 financial crisis, but that same determination to maintain an even keel during the Gulf disaster may be backfiring, with even allies saying he’s coming off as cold and uncharacteristically tone deaf.

“There are times and places where his cool, technocratic mastery is a great blessing… [B]ut, ideology aside, what do you think Reagan would have done in this situation? He’d be down there. Look at Jindal…..It is puzzling, the detachment,” said one veteran Democratic strategist, a frequent defender of Obama.

“I just cringe at the specter of the president doing a political fundraiser in San Francisco during the memorial service or instead of going to the memorial service,” the person added. “He was sure there for the coal miners in West Virginia, he spoke at their funerals. That juxtaposition can’t be good.” (Continues here)

3 years ago, the national laboratory headed by Steven Chu, received $500 million grant from BP

Three years ago, the national laboratory then headed by Steven Chu received the bulk of a $500 million grant from the British oil giant BP to develop alternative energy sources through a new Energy Biosciences Institute.

Dr. Chu received the grant from BP’s chief scientist at the time, Steven E. Koonin, a fellow theoretical physicist whom Dr. Chu jocularly described as “my twin brother.” Dr. Koonin had selected the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, over other universities in the United States and Britain in part because of Dr. Chu’s pioneering work in alternative fuels.

Today, Dr. Chu is President Obama’s energy secretary, and he spent Tuesday in Houston working with BP officials to try to find a way to stop the unabated flow of oil from a ruptured well a mile beneath the Gulf of Mexico.
Dr. Koonin, who followed Dr. Chu to the Energy Department and now serves as under secretary of energy for science, is recused from all matters relating to the disaster because of his past ties to BP, said Stephanie Mueller, an Energy Department spokeswoman.(Continues here at NYT) 

Et tu, Hawaii?

GOP wins House seat in Obama's home district.

HONOLULU - Republicans scored a midterm election victory Saturday when Honolulu City Councilman Charles Djou won a Democratic-held House seat in Hawaii in the district where President Barack Obama grew up.

The congressional race should have been a cakewalk for Democrats. The seat had been held by a Democrat for nearly 20 years and is located in the district where Obama was born and spent most of his childhood.

"This is a momentous day. We have sent a message to the United States Congress. We have sent a message to the national Democrats. We have sent a message to the machine," Djou said. "The congressional seat is not owned by one political party. This congressional seat is owned by the people."

Djou received 67,274 votes, or 39.5 percent. He was trailed by state Senate President Colleen Hanabusa, a Democrat who received 52,445 votes, or 30.8 percent. The other leading Democrat, former U.S. Rep. Ed Case, received 47,012 votes, or 27.6 percent.

Republicans see the victory as a powerful statement about their momentum heading into November. They already sent a Republican to the U.S. Senate to replace the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts — a place that was once thought to be the most hostile of territories for the GOP. Now Republicans can say they won a congressional seat in the former backyard of the president and in a state that gave Obama 72 percent of the vote two years ago.  (Continues here)

A Conservative's Case for Sarah Palin's Genius

I hadn't seen Sarah Palin speak in person since the 2008 elections. If one just watched or read mainstream media accounts of her paid speeches and appearances since then, including some accounts that have been featured on this site, one may have come to the conclusion that Palin was just a money-hungry ex-politician devoid of conviction, half-heartedly speaking to various interest groups and causes to line her pockets or raise her national profile to peddle books that she didn't even write herself.

Curious about how such memes can develop among supposedly intelligent commentators (most of whom are on the left, but the right has its fair share too), I went to Palin's speech in Washington, D.C. on Friday, where she spoke at a breakfast hosted by The Susan B. Anthony List, an extremely influential pro-life organization.

Nowhere did I see a caricature of a bumbling dolt just going through the motions. What I did hear was substance. Warmth. Humor. Unapologetic feistiness. And an optimistic belief in conservative values and principles. And what I saw was the makings of a potentially transcendent and transformational figure not only for the conservative movement but for American politics.

I don't know if Palin wants to or intends to run for President. And though her speech was delivered to those who would most likely comprise her base if she chose to run, this speech - perhaps more than any of her others - showcased some themes for a potential campaign against Democrats, liberals, and President Obama that would be more than formidable and could possibly attract a fair number of independent voters as well. It definitely struck me as a rough draft of something larger down the road.

1. Palin as the "Mama Bear" defending America's children from "generational theft."

As Barack Obama and Democrats spend more money, as the country goes more into debt, as the specter of inflation gets near, it goes without saying that voters will care more about the deficit and fiscal responsibility, and they will demand politicians do something about it. Americans often tell pollsters they worry that their children will be the first generation of children who won't do better than their parents, and they often cite America's crippling debt as one of the primary reasons for their pessimism. If Palin can convince voters - old and young - that she is indeed the proverbial "mama bear" fighting to restore an America where parents leave behind for their children an America that is in better shape than the one they inherited from their parents, it would resonate powerfully.

2. Palin as a "frontier feminist."

The frontier has always been a powerful symbol in American politics. But Palin personifies this theme in way unlike any other previous politician. As she alluded to in her speech, women on the frontier have always been ahead of the curve; Palin made reference to how frontier women fought for suffrage before it became popular among the more educated classes on the east coast. She made references to frontier women having to "do it all" in defining her version of a new feminism and then connected the Tea Party movement to mothers, sensing in their guts when something is wrong, "rising up." The more Palin can convince independent voters to align themselves with the frontier ethos, as opposed to the technocratic model associated with Obama that promises competence but may not always deliver on it, the more powerful this message will get.

But the frontier may represent a more powerful meme in the coming decade for yesterday's frontier is today's and tomorrow's exurbs, a place where middle class Americans escape crowded cities and suburbs to better their lots in life. These voters don't want government to get in the way of their economic aspirations but also want government to ensure that they wont' be, for lack of a better term, "screwed" by corporations that can sometimes be just as stifling as an oppressive government. Call them Tea Partiers. Or cloth-coat conservatives. Or Reagan Democrats. Or voters who call themselves conservative and not Republican. These voters and those who identify with this spirit have swung every election since 1980. (Continues here)

Want to Talk to Kagan’s Family? Permission Denied

White Houses traditionally put a muzzle on their Supreme Court nominees, to keep them from saying anything that might jeopardize Senate confirmation. But the Obama White House has taken it one step further. It is limiting, if not blocking, access to the nominee’s family.

The New York Times received permission on Tuesday from Hunter College High School in Manhattan, Elena Kagan’s alma mater, to observe a constitutional law class there taught by her brother Irving. We thought it would be intriguing to watch the give and take between Mr. Kagan, who is known as a passionate and interactive educator, and his students on his first day back after witnessing his sister’s nomination in Washington.

Mr. Kagan, who is also a Hunter alumnus, did not have a problem with the idea, a school spokeswoman said, but she added that all media requests now had to be given final approval by the White House. The times were tentatively set: there was either an 8:52 a.m. class or a 9:36 a.m. class on Wednesday. “I thought it would have been great,” said the spokeswoman, Meredith Halpern.

But when presented with the idea, the White House balked.

Joshua Earnest, a White House spokesman, said that the administration was “uncomfortable with the idea at this time.” The White House called Hunter, and Ms. Halpern said later Tuesday it could not permit the class observation. A formal proposal has been submitted to the White House, which the administration requested. They asked that it outline the intent and goal of the article in significant detail. (continues here at NYT)

Laura Bush on Marriage: Gay Couples 'Should Have the Same Rights' as Everyone Else

Former First Lady Laura Bush discussed her views on same-sex marriage and abortion on Larry King last night. She said committed gay couples should have the same rights as everyone else and believes acceptance of it is a "generational thing." She also discussed her views on abortion, that she believes it should remain legal.

In late April I posted an excerpt from her new book, which said, "In 2004 the social question that animated the campaign was gay marriage. Before the election season had unfolded, I had talked to George about not making gay marriage a significant issue. We have, I reminded him, a number of close friends who are gay or whose children are gay. But at that moment I could never have imagined what path this issue would take and where it would lead.”  (Source)

Study shows broad support for Arizona migrant law

(Reuters) - A solid majority of Americans back Arizona's tough crackdown on illegal immigrants, while just 25 percent support President Barack Obama's immigration policy which includes legalizing millions of unauthorized migrants, a study found on Wednesday.

The controversial Arizona law passed last month requires state and local police, after making "lawful contact," to check the immigration status of anyone they reasonably suspect is in the country illegally, and arrest those who cannot prove it.

The report by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press (www.people-press.org) found that 59 percent of adults polled in a national survey gave their overall approval to the law, which opponents charge is unconstitutional and a mandate for racial profiling.

Seventy-three percent said they backed a measure requiring people to produce documents verifying their legal status if police ask for them, while 67 percent approve of allowing police to detain anyone who cannot verify that they are in the country legally.

The new law has pushed a debate over immigration to the fore in U.S. politics, and rebooted a drive by Obama and Senate Democrats to overhaul federal immigration laws -- although it is seen as a longshot before November congressional elections.

Obama supports a system allowing undocumented immigrants in good standing to pay a fine, learn English and become citizens. He also backs tightening border security and clamping down on employers that hire undocumented workers.

The survey, carried out among 994 adults -- found that only 25 percent supported Obama's handling of immigration policy, while more than twice as many -- 54 percent -- said they disapproved.

It found that Democrats are evenly split over the Arizona law -- which is set to come into effect at the end of July -- with 45 percent backing it and 46 percent saying they disapprove of it.

The measure, signed into law by Arizona's Republican Governor Jan Brewer on April 23, has triggered an international furor and unleashed legal challenges and calls for an economic boycott of the Grand Canyon state.

On Tuesday, United Nations human rights experts added their voices to criticism of the law, saying it may lead to police targeting people on the basis of ethnic origin, in violation of international law.

(Reporting by Tim Gaynor; editing by Mohammad Zargham)  - Reuters

Something big is happening

Something big is happening. Big enough to alarm the White House. So big that the administration did an abrupt about-face regarding terrorism.

Terrorism's serious now -- driving major policy reversals. The administration just won't tell us why.

A week ago, failed Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad wasn't even a Muslim, but a 40-something white male and, as Mayor Bloomberg insisted, probably an opponent of ObamaCare.

Then, after Shahzad's apprehension, we were told that he was just another "one-off" in the tradition of Islamist terrorists who aren't really Islamist terrorists at all, but distraught homeowners unable to meet mortgage payments or victims of our prejudice (such as Maj. Nidal Hassan, the traitor and butcher of Fort Hood).

Even generals who knew better lined up to deny that Shahzad was part of a terror network.

Then wham! Over the weekend, the Obama administration unleashed a reverse-course media offensive -- deploying Attorney General Eric Holder, terror czar John Brennan, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and plentiful back-channel messages from staffers.

Instead of Shahzad being a one-off, Brennan tied him to the Pakistani Taliban and stressed to TV viewers that there are dangers we're "taking very seriously."

Clinton and others warned Pakistan that it must crack down on militant strongholds in North Waziristan, hinting that Islamabad's failure to do so might lead to direct US intervention in Cambodia (uh, sorry, that's Pakistan).

But the administration's biggest policy reversal to date came from Holder, the longtime advocate of terrorist "rights," who offered one of the most belated acknowledgments in history when he told a TV network, "We're now dealing with international terrorism."

Holder, of all people, now wants Congress to change the rules for Miranda rights, giving the government more time under a "public-safety exception" to permit extended questioning of terrorist suspects before arming them with lawyers.

And there wasn't a single mention of "man-caused disasters" this time around. Every administration point person talked "terrorism." Next thing you know, somebody in the White House will use the term "Islamist terrorist."

So what does this startling policy shift mean for you?

So what does this startling policy shift mean for you?

First, the administration has plainly realized that the terror danger is much higher than it believed one week ago.

Second, it means that Shahzad really has been talking -- almost certainly tipping us that there are more America-bound terror trainees out there (or already here) and letting us fit together important pieces of the intelligence puzzle.

Third, the White House obviously fears more terror attacks sooner rather than later.

This sudden policy shift and media mobilization by an administration that's usually lethargic on security issues means that folks at the top are worried about the political costs of a successful terrorist strike.

For all the backslapping over how quickly we nabbed Shahzad after the failed attack (a combination of superb police work and dumb luck), it seems at last to have dawned on the administration that, for all his technical ineptitude, Shahzad came very, very close to killing and wounding hundreds of Americans at a location symbolic of our country.  (continues here)

"Is anyone driving this ship?"

The biggest environmental disaster in recent American history reveals an important "leadership secret" of Barack Obama:

Although President Obama has not entirely escaped blame for the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, he has certainly gotten off lightly.

Why? Well, who is there to criticize him? It was not Obama who chanted "drill, baby, drill." Yes, he issued an order in March allowing more offshore drilling. But that order was squeezed from him by Republican pressure. Can the Republicans now blast him for a decision they demanded?

Obama used the same method in Afghanistan. He pondered his Afghan surge for months. The delay maddened the president's opponents, who urged action, action, action. If anything goes wrong in Afghanistan -- here again, the president was visibly forced. (Source)

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said three months ago that ending the ban on gays in the military would be the "right thing to do." CentCom commander David Petraeus agreed "the time has come." Where's the president? At the back of the line.

Maybe you think the economy is recovering too sluggishly? Don't blame the president! He didn't write the stimulus -- Congress did. Hate TARP? It was Bush's policy, the president only continued it. Why did health care drag on for 15 months? The president was letting the process unfold.

George W. Bush led from the front. He enunciated big and often unpopular goals. He forced the pace of action. He put his face on issues from Iraq to Social Security, reform to immigration. If anything went wrong, he found himself alone with all the blame.

Obama leads from the rear. He acts only after the call for action has become a clamor. Accumulating national debt? Let's hear what the Simpson-Bowles debt commission has to say. Iran moving toward a nuclear bomb? The U.S. is waiting for the UN to agree on a sanctions program. And waiting. And waiting.

Back in 2007, candidate Obama excoriated Bush for hesitation on climate change: "Washington hasn't acted; and that is the real reason why America hasn't led."

Three years later, when environmentalists press the Obama administration to act and lead, administration aides wearily explain that the president cannot act until Congress is willing.

Presidential passivity can be an effective tactic. Passivity can be a realistic response to inhospitable conditions. But it can also be a feature of a presidential personality leading the world -- the nation -- and even the president's own party to wonder: "Is anyone driving this ship?"

Sarah Palin's Warm & Fuzzy Betty White Encounter

The Palins were out in force Tuesday night – Sarah Palin, accompanied by daughter Piper, 9, and hubby Todd, worked the room at a reception for Time's 100 Most Influential People issue at New York's Time Warner Center.

The former Alaska governor, who made the illustrious list, said her family represented "the average, everyday, hardworking American. That's who we are."

Still, the one-time vice presidential nominee got some face time with famous attendees like Betty White. Did they swap SNL talk? Perhaps. (White is preparing for her first hosting stint this Saturday.) Lorne Michaels, the show's creator, did have nice things to say about Palin, who made an appearance on the show while campaigning with John McCain. "She was gracious, incredibly nice to everyone who she was working with and more charming than anyone was expecting," he told PEOPLE.

Meanwhile, Piper snuck in a photo opp with Taylor Swift and Ashton Kutcher, who raved about the starry array of guests. "This is kind of like everybody that I want to see," he said, "and all the performers that I want to see."

But which attendee got Sarah Palin excited? Elton John!

"Yeah, I was a kid in the '70s and '80s," she said. "Elton John’s really good."  (Source)

Reid invites Wall St. contribution

On Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid accused Republicans of “making love to Wall Street” during the financial regulatory reform debate.

But just a day earlier, at least one Wall Street firm received a request to contribute $2,500 to Harry Reid’s re-election campaign.

An invitation to the fundraiser, sent to a Wall Street firm, was obtained by POLITICO.

Reid and Republicans have been trading charges about cozying up to Wall Street for weeks, with Reid going after his Republican counterpart Mitch McConnell for meeting with Wall Street execs and McConnell returning fire about a Reid fundraiser in New York.

But Reid’s spokesman Jim Manley said Reid isn’t “taking money from Wall Street PACs right now.” He explained that Reid’s campaign has a very large mailing list, and “just because they receive an invite it doesn’t mean they are being solicited.”

The invitation shows that the event, billed as a “pre-primary breakfast,” is hosted by Assistant Majority Leader Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and 14 other Democratic senators. The 7:45 a.m. session on May 19th will be held at the Liaison Hotel on New Jersey Avenue, just two blocks from the Capitol building.

The invitation requests donations of $2,500 from political action committee (PAC) “co-hosts,” and $1,000 from individual “co-hosts,” who would receive “priority seating.”

General seating is offered for $1,000 per PAC guest or $500 per individual.

The invitation asks that checks be made to “Friends for Harry Reid.”

On the same day as the Reid event, lobbyist Lee Weingart of the LNE Group will be hosting a $1,000 per person evening reception at his lobbying firm for Ohio Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown.

An invitation to that event, too, was sent to a Wall Street firm.

Brown is a co-sponsor of a measure that would break up large Wall Street banks — an idea that is extremely unpopular among Wall Street executives.

“Senator Brown’s views are well known,” said Brown’s spokeswoman, Meghan Dubyak. “People who choose to support him know full well where he stands.” Weingart didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. (Source)

Major blow to Democrats

In a major blow to Democrats, House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey has told close associates that he will not seek re-election and an announcement of his plans is expected as early as Wednesday.

The Wisconsin Democrat faces tough poll numbers at home but until Tuesday night his staff had insisted he was running aggressively and had hired campaign staff. But a person close to him confirmed the decision to POLITICO Wednesday and said Obey was preparing to make a statement.

A senior Clinton administration figure and veteran of '94 made the case to me the other day that while some scrappy newcomers who knew how to fight competitive races had survived the 1994 bloodbath, its biggest victims were senior figures like Obey who grown tired of campaigning. That's a logic Obey seems to be buying. (Source)

Our enemies believe we're cowards. We're also fools.

Appeasement doesn't work. It doesn't work with dictators, and it doesn't work with terrorists. The attempted Times Square bombing was yet more proof.

We've allowed Islamist extremists to dictate what we can say, print or portray. We don't want to offend them. The First Amendment bows before Islam.

The Obama administration has ducked all unwelcome evidence that such appeasement doesn't work. Instead, it goes to absurd lengths to convince Muslim radicals that we respect their views.

Our counterfactual assumption is that, if we're really, really nice, the fanatics will stop being grumpy and blowing us up. But Islamist extremists haven't read our actions (or inactions) as an admirable exercise in tolerance. They read our bowing and scraping and apologizing as weakness.

The mean-dog law applies: Let that pit bull sense that you're afraid, and you're going to feel its teeth.

Instead of applauding our ecumenical decency, terrorists just smell fear.

So we've had yet another attempt to ignite an inferno in the heart of Manhattan, to slaughter the innocent and teach America a lesson.

Since the Obama administration deepened our submissive attitude toward Islam -- banning all references to "Islamist terror" or "Muslim radicalism" from government documents and statements -- the number of terror attacks on our soil has gone up. Does any reader believe this is just a coincidence?

The dogs of terror smell fear. Terror's response to our president's Cairo valentine to fanaticism last year was the Fort Hood massacre, the attempted Christmas Day bombing, now the botched bombing of Times Square -- and a swelling number of foiled plots.

The Times Square near-miss was particularly revealing. When it looked like the bomber might be a forty-something white male, the media's delight and the relief of our politicians was palpable: At last, another Timothy McVeigh! It isn't only Muslims!

Boo-hoo. The perp turned out to be another Islamist terrorist we can't call an "Islamist terrorist."

Now the question of most interest about the terrorists' latest Manhattan Project is whether Faisal Shahzad, a newly naturalized citizen (great vetting job!), chose Times Square just because it's a powerful symbol and always crowded -- or if he also hoped to hit Viacom's headquarters as punishment for South Park's (promptly self-censored) lampoon of Mohammed. (continues here)

Tea Party Nation: Bloomberg needs to apologize!

New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg has, as James Fallows amusingly notes, taken the opposite of the Washington approach to terrorism: He's downplayed the Times Square incident, mocked the attacker as an "amateur," and insisted on the quality of the existing security apparatus, all with a total lack of sentimentalism that's the hallmark of his mayoralty.

Bloomberg also speculated — before a suspect was named — that the incident wasn't Islamist terrorism at all.

"If I had to guess 25 cents, this would be exactly that. Homegrown, or maybe a mentally deranged person, or somebody with a political agenda that doesn't like the health care bill or something. It could be anything," he told Katie Couric.

Now that a suspect is in custody, actual health care foes — who feel they're too often accused of violence — are demanding an apology.

"Instead of apologizing for getting it wrong, or insulting mainstream, patriotic Americans, Bloomberg's response has been to say that 'bias will not be tolerated.' Mr. Mayor, how about your bias against the majority of Americans in this country?" the group Tea Party Nation e-mailed supporters today. "Mayor Bloomberg needs to apologize to all of the Americans he insulted with his 'speculation.'"

The Daily Caller and Hot Air are also taking note of Bloomberg's notion. (Source POLITICO)

There since Day One? Maybe not

WASHINGTON – To hear Obama administration officials tell it, they've been fully engaged on the Gulf Coast oil spill since Day One, bringing every resource to bear and able to ensure without question that taxpayers will be protected.

Not quite.

Take President Barack Obama's repeated claims that BP will be responsible for all the costs associated with the devastating spill that began after an oil rig operated by the company exploded April 20, killing 11 workers and later sinking.

"Let me be clear: BP is responsible for this leak; BP will be paying the bill," Obama said while touring the area Sunday.

While it's true that the federal Oil Pollution Act, enacted in 1990 in response to the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska, makes BP responsible for cleanup costs, the law caps the company's liability for economic damages — such as lost wages, shortened fishing seasons or lagging tourism — at $75 million, a pittance compared to potential losses.

Administration officials insist BP will be held responsible anyway, noting that if the company is found negligent or criminally liable, the cap disappears. Claims also can potentially be made under other state or federal laws, officials said.

Yet the liability cap is problematic enough that a trio of Democratic senators introduced legislation Monday raising it to $10 billion, and the administration quickly announced its support. Sens. Robert Menendez and Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey and Bill Nelson of Florida voiced concerns that unless the cap is raised, BP would avoid paying for the mess and leave small businesses, local government and fishermen with the bill.

"They're not going to want to pay any more than what the law says they have to," Nelson said.

That's not quite the seemingly ironclad guarantee heard from the president.

Then there's the administration's rhetoric about anticipating the magnitude of the crisis and bringing all resources to bear on Day One.

"We had (Defense Department) resources there from Day One. This was a situation that was treated as a possible catastrophic failure from, from Day One," Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press."

That sense of urgency was not so apparent when White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was questioned about the incident April 23, three days after it occurred. At the time he seemed to dismiss its severity and indicated it wouldn't affect Obama's plans to open up new areas of the coast to offshore drilling.

"I don't honestly think it opens up a whole new series of questions, because, you know, in all honesty I doubt this is the first accident that has happened and I doubt it will be the last," Gibbs said.

A week later, Obama was announcing plans for Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to review whether new technologies were needed to safeguard against oil spills from deep-water drilling rigs. The president said no new offshore oil drilling leases would be issued without any such safeguards.

And Napolitano's comments over the weekend about the Pentagon's Day One role seemed a change from last Thursday, when she seemed to indicate the Defense Department was not yet involved in responding to the spill: "If and when they have something to add, we'll certainly make that known," she said.

A Homeland Security spokesman, Sean Smith, said Napolitano's more recent comments referred to the Navy's help with the Coast Guard's search and rescue mission early on, and that when she was discussing the Defense Department last Thursday she was alluding to any additional help they could bring to bear.

The administration's evolving rhetoric reflects not only the increasing seriousness of the spill itself, but its determination to be seen as responsive from the get-go and to squelch comparisons to the Bush administration's slow-footed response to Hurricane Katrina.

It's only natural that administration officials would adjust their response as the spill worsened and its seriousness became evident. But they invite judgment when claiming they responded at 100 percent starting Day One to an incident whose magnitude was not yet apparent, or when black-and-white assertions about taxpayer protections turn out to be tinged with gray. (Source)

In '07 Napolitano signed the toughest law aimed at businesses that employed undocumented workers.

Consider this: an Arizona governor signs a provocative piece of immigration legislation that critics say will lead to discrimination and trigger a hard-fought legal battle over states’ rights.

That was the scenario last month when Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, a Republican, set off a national firestorm by signing a bill instructing local police to enforce immigration laws. But it also happened in 2007 when then-Gov. Janet Napolitano, a Democrat who now is homeland security secretary, signed what she touted as the toughest law in the nation aimed at shutting down businesses that employ undocumented workers.

While President Barack Obama and his aides expressed outrage over the bill that Brewer signed and are publicly mulling over a Justice Department lawsuit to challenge it, the administration has been in no hurry to take a stand on the legislation approved by Napolitano, who is the president’s point person on immigration.

In fact, the U.S. Supreme Court asked the Obama administration for its views on the Arizona employer sanctions law on Nov. 2. So far, there’s been only silence. Now, any government response will get extra scrutiny, given the growing battle over immigration in Arizona.

“I just think the Obama administration is kind of floundering here, trying to figure out what to do,” said Jan Ting, a Temple University law professor who held a senior immigration post under President George H.W. Bush. “They’ve just got to be in agony.”

“It’s amazing timing,” said Muzaffar Chishti of the Migration Policy Institute. “This now puts tremendous pressure on them to write a different kind of a response than they would in the absence of this [new] law.” (Continues here)

NY car bomb suspect identified as Faisal Shahzad

Attorney General Eric Holder says Customs agents have arrested Faisal Shahzad in connection with the failed plot to detonate a car bomb in New York's Times Square.

Holder says Shahzad was arrested late Monday as he tried to board a flight to Dubai leaving from New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport.

The attorney general described Shahzad as an American citizen. He did not release information on Shahzad's home town. (Source)

U.S. citizen of Pakistani descent arrested in NYC bomb attempt

Authorities arrested a suspect in the attempted weekend car bombing in Times Square, NBC News' justice correspondent Pete Williams reported early Tuesday morning.

A U.S. citizen of Pakistani descent, Shahzad Faisal, was arrested Monday night on Long Island, Williams reported.

Earlier, an official told The Associated Press that the potential suspect recently traveled to Pakistan. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the case was at a sensitive stage.

The officials said the man was a Connecticut resident who paid cash weeks ago for the SUV parked in Times Square on Saturday and rigged with a crude propane-and-gasoline bomb.

NBC's Williams reported the man's name was on an e-mail that was sent to the seller of the car last month, as well as other evidence suggesting he had a role in the attempted bombing.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post reported on Monday that an FBI-led terrorism task force has taken over the investigation of the failed car bombing in Times Square because of indications it was connected to international terrorism, a senior law enforcement source said.

The probe had been overseen by the New York Police Department. Responsibility for it shifted to a Joint Terrorism Task Force as Obama administration officials said the incident increasingly appears to have been coordinated by more than one person in a plot with international links, the Post reported on its Web site.

The White House, according to the Post, intensified its focus on the failed bombing Saturday in New York City, in which explosives inside a Nissan Pathfinder were set ablaze but failed to detonate at the busy corner of Broadway and 45th Street. Emerging from a series of briefings, several officials told the Post it was too early to rule out any motive but said the sweeping investigation was turning up new clues.(Continues here)

Riot breaks out in downtown Santa Cruz at a May Day rally

A large group of protesters demonstrating at a May Day rally for worker's and immigrant rights downtown broke off into a riot vandalizing about a dozen businesses around 10:30 p.m. Saturday, police said.
Many in the group were carrying makeshift torches as they marched, breaking storefront windows and writing "anarchist graffiti" on buildings, according to Capt. Steve Clark. Many businesses sustained multiple broken windows including very large storefront windows at Urban Outfitters and The Rittenhouse building. Police believe at least 15 businesses suffered damage.

The violence was initiated from a group holding a rally at the town clock for May Day. Windows at Jamba Juice and Velvet Underground were left shattered and graffiti including anarchy signs were tagged onto buildings.
Because of the size and violent demeanor of the crowd, Santa Cruz police asked for help from all agencies in the county to break up the riot. At one point, protesters lit a fire on the porch of Caffe Pergolesi and blocked access to firefighters, officers said. Police were able to clear out the demonstrators before more damage was caused.

A large rock sat outside Verizon Wireless on the 100 block of Cooper Street, where vandals tried to break the window twice, according to Clark.
"The damage that was caused was without purpose," Clark said. "It was senseless violence that victimized a community who cannot afford to be victimized in this manner. This did nothing to add credit to whatever they believed their cause was."
One person, 24-year-old Jimi Haynes, a transient from Fresno County, was arrested for felony vandalism for damaging a window. Haynes is also wanted on a parole violation, Clark said. Police are searching for others responsible for the damage. Protesters cleared the downtown area around midnight.

"Our entire team of investigators are processing the scene of violence for evidence," Clark said. "We will be looking at video available
to try to ID who's responsible."

Haynes was observed traveling with this group and breaking windows at the Dell Williams Jewelry store. Haynes broke two large display windows in the front of the store. The witnesses followed him and called police. Haynes was located by arriving Watsonville PD officers who detained Haynes, Clark said.
Haynes is on parole out of Fresno County for burglary. He has been in Santa Cruz for the past several weeks where he has established an arrest history, Clark said. Haynes admitted to participating in the rally after receiving a flyer at a local anarchist café. Haynes was booked into Santa Cruz County Jail.

Once order was restored, police detectives worked throughout the night to collect evidence and document the damage to each of the businesses, Clark said. The police department guarded exposed storefronts, and arranged for private security to watch the businesses until windows could be boarded, and responsible persons contacted.

The police department encourages anyone with information (include any photos or video footage) to make contact and report the information. The police department will be working to identify and prosecute additional individuals involved in the march and subsequent violence.

Police ask anyone with information about the incident to contact the investigations department at 420-5820.

Jonathan Capehart : Sarah Palin makes sense -- on offshore drilling

Leave it to an ecological disaster unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico and lapping up on the shores of Louisiana to put me and Sarah Palin on the same page. Usually, when the former Alaska governor issues something on Facebook, I roll my eyes at her empty rhetoric about common-sense conservative solutions or some-such. But on the issue of offshore drilling, Palin's Friday missive makes sense. There, I said it.

All responsible energy development must be accompanied by strict oversight, but even with the strictest oversight in the world, accidents still happen. No human endeavor is ever without risk – whether it’s sending a man to the moon or extracting the necessary resources to fuel our civilization. I repeat the slogan “drill here, drill now” not out of naiveté or disregard for the tragic consequences of oil spills – my family and my state and I know firsthand those consequences. How could I still believe in drilling America’s domestic supply of energy after having seen the devastation of the Exxon-Valdez spill? I continue to believe in it because increased domestic oil production will make us a more secure, prosperous, and peaceful nation.

No, domestic oil production alone will not make the United States more secure. “I want to emphasize that this announcement is part of a broader strategy that will move us from an economy that runs on fossil fuels and foreign oil to one that relies on homegrown fuels and clean energy," President Obama said on March 31 in announcing his comprehensive energy strategy, which includes unpopular (but necessary) plans for off-shore drilling and nuclear power.

In a New York Times opinion piece yesterday, Lisa Margonelli of the New America Foundation brought up an issue that Americans pushing for a halt to the president's plans as a result of the Deepwater Horizon disaster would do well to keep in mind. "Moratoriums have a moral problem," she wrote. "All oil comes from someone’s backyard, and when we don’t reduce the amount of oil we consume, and refuse to drill at home, we end up getting people to drill for us in Kazakhstan, Angola and Nigeria — places without America’s strong environmental safeguards or the resources to enforce them."

To illustrate her point, Margonelli points out that "Nigeria has suffered spills equivalent to that of the Exxon Valdez every year since 1969. (As of last year, Nigeria had 2,000 active spills.)" After noting that this nation's oil consumption has increased by two thirds since the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill and our import of oil has nearly quadrupled, Margonelli points out an inconvenient truth. "Effectively, we’ve been importing oil and exporting spills to villages and waterways all over the world.

Obama's visit to the Gulf Coast yesterday underscored just how bad things are and could be. But I won't join the chorus demanding that off-shore drilling be stopped forever in the U.S. for one simple reason: Until renewable energy sources are more widely available we have no choice. We need the fuel. (Source Washington Post)

Burning should have started a week ago, former NOAA official says

Federal officials should have started burning oil off the surface of the Gulf last week, almost as soon as the spill happened, said the former oil spill response coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Ron Gouget, who also managed Louisiana's oil response team for a time, said federal officials missed a narrow window of opportunity to gain control of the spill by burning last week, before the spill spread hundreds of miles across the Gulf, and before winds began blowing toward shore.

He also said the heavy use of dispersants, which cause oil to sink, has likely knocked so much oil into the water column that portions of the Gulf may be on the threshold of becoming toxic to marine life. Add in the oil spreading into the water as it rises from the seafloor, and Gouget said he expected officials would have to think about limiting the use of the dispersants.

"There was a threshold of about 35 part per million for oil in the water. Above that, white shrimp larvae died in the laboratory. I don't know where the levels are now in the Gulf, but that is something they will have to keep an eye on," Gouget said.

Gouget, now an environmental consultant with Windward Associates in Seattle, was part of the group that created the 1994 plan designed to allow federal responders to begin burning oil as soon as a major spill occurred, without an approval process.

"They had pre-approval. The whole reason the plan was created was so we could pull the trigger right away instead of waiting ten days to get permission," Gouget said. "If you read the pre-approval plan, it speaks about Grand Isle, where the spill is. When the wind is blowing offshore out of the north, you have preapproval to burn in that region. If the wind is coming onshore, like it is now, you can't burn at Grand Isle. They waited to do the test burn until the wind started coming onshore."

Asked why officials waited for a week before conducting even a test burn, Gouget said, "Good question. Maybe complacency was the biggest issue. They probably didn't have the materials on hand to conduct the burn, which is unconscionable."

He said the NOAA officials involved at the Unified Command Center in Louisiana know how to respond to spills, and know burning should have started as soon as possible after the initial release was detected. Gouget said they may have been overruled.(Continues here)