Legal Commentary

Problems viewing BeldarBlog from particular browsers?

Posted on August 02, 2008
Personally, I use Firefox 3 ? free, fast, less buggy and less of a memory hog, and with cool plug-in apps that are also free ? almost exclusively, and I love it. I only use Microsoft's Internet Exploder Explorer on those few (and increasingly more rare) occasions when I'm effectively forced to because someone's written an IE-only web app...

McCain vs. Obama: A self-image comparison

Posted on July 30, 2008
McCain: Obama: "In war and peace, I have been an imperfect servant of my country. But I have been her servant first, last and always. Whenever I faced an important choice between my country's interests or my own interests, party politics or any special interest, I chose my country...

In memoriam: Bary Edward Eagleson (11/20/56 to 7/15/08)

Posted on July 29, 2008
Two weeks ago, my family lost a very good friend. I've been searching sadly for words since then to write about him, and I'm not satisfied with these, but I don't want to delay making this post any longer, and they'll have to do. Odds are, you didn't know him...

Regardless of his ranking among Senate liberals, Obama is the Most Dangerous Liberal in America

Posted on July 29, 2008
Ramesh Ponnuru on The Corner links Josh Patashnik at The New Republic, who ? contra the ranking by National Journal, which tagged Obama as the "Most Liberal Senator of 2007" ? links a "separate and more elaborate ranking system, developed by highly regarded political scientists Jeff Lewis and Keith Poole," which asserts that Obama is merely "the 11th most liberal...

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Palin versus Obama at Landsduhl

Posted on July 27, 2008
Some politicians only bother to undertake good deeds when they can bring their campaign reporters and photographers. Others are more decent and less craven. In July 2007, Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AL) traveled to a U.S. military base in Kuwait to visit Alaska National Guard soldiers who provide logistical support for our operations in Iraq...

Questions about Obama as a foreign affairs rock-star versus subcommittee chairman

Posted on July 25, 2008
When the Democrats gained majority control of the U.S. Senate in January 2007 based on the results of the 2006 elections, Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) was named chairman of the Subcommittee on European Affairs of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Its jurisdiction is formally defined to include the following matters (boldface mine): The subcommittee deals with all matters concerning U...

Did Bobby Jindal claim to have performed an exorcism?

Posted on July 22, 2008
In comments to a post on Outside the Beltway entitled McCain to Pick VP This Week: Romney or Jindal?, someone commenting under the name "Hal" quipped: "McCain/Jindal '08: Because The White House Needs An Exorcist!" Now, that's typical moonbat twaddle that I'd ordinarily ignore, but a couple of comments down, another blogger, Dr...

MSM covers up both Obama's arrogance and imprecision in interview gaffe during Afghanistan/Iraq trip

Posted on July 21, 2008
Today on CBS's Face the Nation, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., in Afghanistan, told the paparazzi-pursued correspondent Lara Logan that "the objective of this trip was to have substantive discussions with people like President Karzai or Prime Minister Maliki or President Sarkozy or others who I expect to be dealing with over the next eight to 10 years...

And the band marched on

Posted on July 21, 2008
On Outside the Beltway, Dr. James Joyner posted today a story (with an embedded video clip that, alas, appears to have already been zapped from YouTube) entitled Army Band Hit By Skydiver, Marches On. It reminded me of an incident that I witnessed in Austin at the Texas/Texas A&M football game during Thanksgiving Weekend in 1974...

"Most popular politician in the country," a hockey mom from Alaska, is indeed in "the realm of the possible" as McCain's Veep choice

Posted on July 18, 2008
It's not quite all-Palin all-the-time at BeldarBlog, but I'll forgive you if you draw that conclusion. I'm as hungry for inspiration as anyone else who's planning on voting for McCain next fall, so the natural subject on which to seek inspiration is his pending choice of a running mate...

Obama picks Hagel as his travel buddy for Iraq

Posted on July 13, 2008
Last year, I wrote of Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE): It's not that I think he's unpatriotic. It's that I think he's too stupid to be left alone in a room with a book of matches. So to demonstrate his bipartisan bona fides, and to illustrate his willingness to seek wisdom and judgment from across the aisle as well as from...

R.I.P. Dr. Michael DeBakey and Tony Snow

Posted on July 12, 2008
I've heard this morning already news of the deaths of two Americans, one prematurely and the other after a full life, but both remarkable men. Dr. Michael DeBakey was a legend who forever changed both cardiovascular medicine and the City of Houston. Exactly three years ago this week, I was in the cardiac care unit at The Methodist Hospital, and...

McCain should say: "I shall go to Alaska! (And I will take along the press!)"

Posted on July 11, 2008
I tend to agree with Hugh Hewitt's characterization of Richard Baehr's opinion piece entitled How McCain Could Win as "best column of the day." In particular, regular readers will recognize some of these same arguments as having previously appeared on this blog, among other places, but Baehr stitches them cogently and concisely (boldface mine): So who would help the ticket...

Gramm's right, McCain's wrong, but Gramm and I will both vote for the grumpy old man anyway

Posted on July 11, 2008
Okay. I understand why it's politically expedient to throw Phil Gramm under the bus. But Gramm ? who has a PhD in economics, who taught that subject at Texas A&M for many years before entering the U.S. Senate, and who knows damn well what the definition of a "recession" is, and that under that definition we still haven't been established...

Funniest thing I've heard this month

Posted on July 09, 2008
Fox News reports that lots of blog posters on my-obama-dot-whatever have written there that, based on Obama's policy reversals on such things as FISA telecom immunity, they've been calling his party headquarters demanding refunds of their campaign contributions...

Brilliant idiocy on energy from Democratic über-policymaker Robert Reich

Posted on July 07, 2008
A short piece entitled "Short Straw Economics" in today's NYT Magazine (h/t Althouse) contains questions to and answers from Robert Reich. Reich was Secretary of Labor for the Clinton Administration. He's currently in exile from government as a professor of public policy at UC Berkeley...

The important point that Kennedy v. Louisiana proves about Boumediene v. Bush

Posted on July 06, 2008
This is a post in which I attempt to connect some dots between two awful Supreme Court decisions. As usual, I meander a bit en route. You can skip to the numbered paragraphs and the bold-faced stuff near the end if you grow impatient. ******* Friday night, on the anniversary of our nation's independence, I much enjoyed the televised presentation...

Why committing now to begin drilling ASAP will indeed affect the oil price now

Posted on July 02, 2008
I wrote last week, without bothering to do any online research or include any links, about why under basic economic principles, what we do now (or choose not to do now) affects present expectations about the future supply of oil, and why those expectations do indeed affect the current price of oil...

Palin would give voters grounds to consider the 2008 GOP Veep nominee on more than the three traditional occasions

Posted on July 01, 2008
Writing in the New York Observer, Steve Kornacki methodically disputes the purported benefits that Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty might bring to the second slot behind McCain on the GOP's 2008 ticket. I came away with a better impression of Gov. Pawlenty's appearance last Sunday on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" than Kornacki did ? Kornacki says his repetition of...

Review: Kaylene Johnson's "Sarah: How a Hockey Mom Turned Alaska's Political Establishment Upside Down"

Posted on June 29, 2008
Enthusiasm for reform-minded, fiscally prudent, and socially conservative Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has moved beyond the "buzz" stage to the point where it's now rolling thunder. On June 8th, after finishing several hours of internet research, I posted a long essay (with many photographs) entitled Would Alaska Gov...

Hold oil speculators accountable while driving down the prices of crude oil and gasoline

Posted on June 26, 2008
This isn't rocket science. Instead, it's quite literally Economics 101. Dems, including both Congressional leaders and their party's presidential candidate, Barack Obama, are all about "investigating" the role of "speculators" in the oil futures markets who, they claim, are responsible for driving up the cost of oil and, thus, the cost of gasoline at the pump...

Why didn't Obama publish anything in the law journal he edited?

Posted on June 23, 2008
"Obama kept Law Review balanced," according to the title of an article by Jeffrey Ressner and Ben Smith on the Politico website. By that, they mean that during his one-year term as president of the Harvard Law Review, Barack Obama gave final approval to the publication of articles by law professors, and shorter "notes" by student authors, that reflected a...

Beldar on WaPo on Obama's "scrupulous manag[ement] of his own biography"

Posted on June 23, 2008
In my last post, I wondered when the WaPo will get around to writing about Barack Obama with any genuine objectivity. An article in today's issue actually starts off promisingly: In the opening weeks of the general-election campaign, Sen. Barack Obama has moved aggressively to shape his campaign and offered a clear road map for the kind of candidate he...

Beldar on WaPo on Houston

Posted on June 23, 2008
Okay, I'm a Houston booster. Houston has been berry, berry good to me, and I admit to having a chip on my shoulder about how unfairly it's usually portrayed by the national media. (To Hollywood, it simply hasn't existed since Terms of Endearment, Urban Cowboy, or Apollo 13...

McClellan, Conyers, WaPo, and AP vie for prize for "Most Disingenuous" in Plamegate testimony and "news articles" that never mention the name "Armitage"

Posted on June 20, 2008
You're watching absolutely false conventional wisdom being repeated over and over again, folks, until only us few with more than 50 functioning neurons and the willpower to resist propaganda actually remember the truth. Without a transcript, I can't be certain that no one mentioned Richard Armitage's name at any point during the hearing...

Legal, but offensively cocky: Obama rips off official presidential seal for his podium, and adds the motto "Vero Possumus"

Posted on June 20, 2008
Yeah, sure, I'd defend to the death Obama's technical legal right under the First Amendment to mangle national icons, burn flags, yada yada yada. It's a free country, and that freedom includes the right to engage in political expression that is crass, tasteless, and irredeemably cocky...

Palin leads Pajamas Media veep poll

Posted on June 19, 2008
As of this moment, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin ? whom I've previously written about at length as a potential grand slam home run as a vice presidential nominee for John McCain ? leads Mitt Romney by a narrow margin, 19% to 18%, in a straw poll being conducted by Pajamas Media...

Scratch a liberal, uncover a communist

Posted on June 18, 2008
U.S. Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY), speaking to the press today (my transcription from TIVO'd coverage on the Fox News channel during Neil Cavuto's show, about 10 minutes ago): So if there's any seriousness about what some of our Republican colleagues are saying here in the House and elsewhere about improving the number of refineries, then maybe they'd be willing to...

Did Michelle Obama, channeling Rev. Wright's racist paranoia, condemn south Chicago girls and young women to unnecessary and preventable STDs and cervical cancer?

Posted on June 18, 2008
To stem the political hemorrhaging it was causing, Sen. & Mrs. Barack Obama have withdrawn from membership at the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. But to what extent did what they heard while they were members affect their activities outside the church over the last several years? Recall these paranoid, racist statements of Rev...

Beldar on Woo on Boumediene; and related thoughts

Posted on June 17, 2008
I respectfully concur, without reservation. ******* Obama, meanwhile, has put himself squarely back into a 1993-style, early-Clinton Administration mode of considering our conflict with radical Islamic fundamentalists as being just another exercise in crime-fighting...

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