If you receive this and you hate it and you don’t want to ever read it no matter what...that is fine; email me back and you will be deleted from my list (which is almost at the maximum anyway).

I attempt to post a new issue each Sunday by 2 or 3 pm central standard time (I sometimes fail at this attempt).

I try to include factual material only, along with my opinions (it should be clear which is which). I make an attempt to include as much of this week’s news as I possibly can. The first set of columns are intentionally designed for a quick read.

I do not accept any advertising nor do I charge for this publication. I write this principally to blow off steam in a nation where its people seemed have collectively lost their minds.

North Korea tests the underground detonation of a nuclear weapon equivalent to those which were used against Hiroshima or Nagasaki. 5 short-range ground-to-air missiles were also tested this same week. North Korea abandons truce established in 1953, which ended the Korean War. Susan Rice, US envoy to the UN, attends a closed door meeting and a strong resolution will be forthcoming.

New Justice Department political appointees (appointed by President Obama) ended a civil complaint against 3 members of the New Black Panther Party for wielding a nightstick and intimidating voters at a Philadelphia polling place last Election Day. There is no question here as to these incidents, as there were many eyewitnesses and film (now on Youtube) of this incident. But they will not be prosecuted at this point in time.

The Obama administration begins to kick around a Value Added Tax, which would be a hidden tax for any product which is sold. This tax would apparently be added in at every juncture of the sale of a product, and could be as high as 25%. Did you hear about this in your news?

It has come to light that, right before the bail out for Bank of America and other institutions, billions were paid out in bonuses. This is much bigger than the AIG bonus scandal. Have you heard about this from your news sources (credit FoxNews and Dennis Kucinich for this)?

What appears to be going on, but no formal news organization is doing the investigation, is that many of the dealerships being shut down are those of Republican donors; and Democratic donors, who are often getting the stock of shut down dealers at a discount, are being kept in business. This is a story still in its infancy, and it is bloggers who are now doing the investigation.

It appears as though the solution to our stalled auto economy is for the government to offer low-cost loans to people with limited funds and limited qualifications. Why does that sound so familiar?

Prague clinic offers free breast augmentation surgery to nurses in order to lure nurses to work in Czechoslovakia hospitals and clinics.

On Memorial Day, Obama did some of the traditional things which presidents do on Memorial Day—except that, for the latter half of the day, he played golf. The press (and, of course, pictures) were banned from this event.

On the Tonight Show, Arnold Schwarzenegger says, after 5 new governmental income generating proposals are voted down, that he now gets the message. I guess that he did not notice the 60 or so tea parties in his state over a month ago?

Energy Secretary Chu: suggests that we paint roofs white in order to fight global warming

North Korea, after their missile and nuclear tests, issued the following statement: "Our army and people are fully ready for battle... against any reckless US attempt for a pre-emptive attack."

And a few quotes from years ago, concerning the nomination of Clarence Thomas (in case you are under the impression that it is conservatives who are racist):

Historian John Henrik Clarke called Thomas: A "frustrated slave crawling back to the plantation."

Former Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders publicly called Justice Thomas an "Uncle Tom" (see Washington Post, May 2, 1995).

“Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.” - P. J. O'Rourke

Also from the past, from Oliver Wendell Holmes, describing how true justice is blind: “I loathe most of the people that I decided in favor of.”

North Korea is testing atomic weapons and missiles which can deliver nuclear weapons. They have done more testing in the past few weeks

under Obama than in all of the Bush administration. Iran is watching carefully, to see if the response from the president will be a stern speech, using the words unacceptable and consequences, while meanwhile sending Susan Rice off again to the U.N. to try to get a strongly worded denunciation of North Korea. Anyone who has any amount of objectivity should recognize that Obama has little or no training in this arena of world politics. His relatively glib comments during his campaign (e.g., his willingness to talk with any rogue dictator anywhere without preconditions) will not cut it when dealing with life and death situations, with dictators whose empathy for their own people is non-existent. These are situations which will require more than slick rhetoric. This calls for a president who understands our relationship with China, Japan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Pakistan. This calls for a president who understands where we can apply pressure, what approach will work with whom, and how we can reach a normalized North Korea and Iran—where we do not have them demonstrating the military capabilities every few days, or the continued development of such weapons. We need a president who, in the worst case scenario, has an active and effective mega-redundant missile defense system (which funding Obama has cut).

We need to recognize that we do not have such a president in power at this time. We have a vice president who, as second in command, has been wrong far more times than he has been right on foreign policy (Biden brings no gravitas to the table). This will be our situation for the next 3.6 years. If this much has happened in just a few months, what will happen to this world over the next 3+ years? If you recognize that we really do have a dire situation on our hands, then, if you know God, this would be a time for prayer.

Bush meets the troops; Obama meets the troops; see if you can tell the difference:

I must admit to making some fun of Dennis Kucinich from time to time, but now and again, this man makes sense (if you were concerned about the AIG bonuses, this is much bigger than that—if it were not for FoxNews, would you even know about this story?):

What I was looking for is this: where all of the Obama talking heads and the news all put out the same message about Sotomayor.

http://www.politico.com/multimedia/ (choose W.H. talking points on Sotomayor—you will have to move down the list of videos down to 5/27/09).

At first, I must say, I thought this could not be. But it appears as though conservative auto dealerships are being shut down and liberal dealerships are being kept open. Bloggers are doing the investigation and news reporters and news services, and scoffing at the idea, but doing no independent investigation. Do you recall that, during the Obama campaign, literally one reporter was actually looking into Obama uniting with Bill Ayers to spend government money; and what came of that, and everyone else ignored this story. Same deal. The news is no longer just biased; they are complicit in covering up.

There is no getting around it; Jon Stewart is a funny guy. Watch at least the first 3 minutes of this video, to enjoy Obama stealing from Bush speeches:

I have mixed feelings about the next video. Congressional Democrats hired a speed-reader to read their “Energy Bill.” This is Henry Waxman’s bill, which he has not read himself (bear in mind that Congressmen do not read these bills; often various lobbyists write the bills, which Congressional leaders do not read or write, but vote on). It is funny, on the one hand; but, on the other, we are talking about bill which will cause $1000's to be taken from every single household in American):

Krauthammer suggests that the solution to a nuclear North Korea is a nuclear Japan.

While trying to find a particular video, I came across the Latina Freedom Fighter. This is her broadcast for this week. It is quite good. I must admit to laughing when she said, “No shit, Sherlock, you think?”

Sean Hannity put together a list of 101 things which our hard-earned money has been wasted on as part of the Obama Stimulus bill:

I have posted a video similar to this, but this is the same information and better presented; it is how the population of Europe is moving toward a Muslim majority. You need to see this (8 million views and counting):

1) The Obama campaign discovered that, you put out brief, great sounding talking points, and make certain that, for at least one week, everyone connected with the campaign stays on these points. The Obama White House now does the exact same thing, so, if anyone knows anything about Judge Sonia Sotomayor, it is that she has a compelling life story. The Obama group understands that, if you push one short talking point over and over, and one that comes out of the mouths of many (including newscasters), that talking point will resonate (“I will reduce the taxes of 95% of Americans”). You can say whatever you want to about this approach being dishonest, that it plays to a bumper sticker mentality, but, it works.

2) Interestingly enough, Democrats have inserted themselves into the New Jersey Republican primary, spending $1.5 million running ads against Chris Christie, one of the Republican nominees for Senator. Whereas, he may or may not be the best candidate, right now, it looks like he will win in 2010, unless the Democrats can prop up the other Republican nominee.

3) FoxNews Watch pointed out that, in the midst of a national security debate between Obama and Cheney (both giving back-to-back speeches on this topic), the New York Times barely mentioned that, on this same day, 4 Muslim terrorists were arrested in New York City. Both the debate and this arrest should have been side-by-side on the front page of the NY Times.

4) As I have done stories on, the problem with wind power and solar power is the huge footprint that these things have. Obama will not do this, but the next Republican president will (I hope), is to begin setting up this small, outhouse-sized nuclear reactors, which will power up 20,000 homes.

5) Hispanics, although they overwhelmingly voted for Obama, are actually far more in synch with the doctrine of the Republican party. The Republican party needs to hire Maria Conchita Alonso as our go-between and spokeswoman.

6) I have heard at least a half-dozen conservatives say that Republicans ought not to go after Sotomayor because of her race or gender. Duh.

7) A report on social security and medicare has just been released, and it predicts that social security will begin to spend more than it takes in, in 2016, a year ahead of schedule. It also predicts that, within 8 years, medicare will be unable to pay all of its bills. So, does it make sense to heap another huge entitlement program on top of these, namely a public health care system?

8) This is pretty basic, but just in case you were not aware, when the government needs money, it either prints more money, borrows it or taxes more. When it prints an inordinate amount of money (which has been happening as of late), the end result is inflation, tied to the amount of money which is being shoved out into the country. This is a hidden tax. When you go to the store one week, and a gallon of milk costs you $3, and a few weeks later, it is $4, your money has been devalued. This is just as much a tax as government saying, “I want 25% of your money.” This kind of tax hits the poor and the middle class in a much bigger way than it does the rich. If you are about to retire, and you have been saving money, this destroys the value of the money that you have set aside. Obama has set up a myriad of programs which he cannot pay for. This amount that he is spending is beyond one’s imagination. For every $2 he spends, there is $1 unaccounted for, so that $1 must be printed, borrowed or taxed. His first year deficit is 4x anything Bush’s highest deficit. Whether you are a Democrat or a Republican, you should be able to grasp that, if Bush spent too much money over what the government took in, then spending 4x that is 4 times as bad.

Obama economic advisors released a report that claimed that, without the stimulus, unemployment will reach 8.5% in April of 2009; if the stimulus package is passed, it will be 7.9%. It is now at 8.9%.

Every household is now $546,668 in debt because of the spending of the federal government. If every worker paid $2 out of every $3 that he or she makes, this debt would be paid off in 10 years.

12% of all mortgages were behind by at least one payment for the 1^st quarter of this year.

43% of Americans would support such a tax, if federal income tax was eliminated.

Saturday Night Live and late night comics seem to be unable to make fun of anything related to Obama; Biden shows them how this is done:

Claire McCaskill for recognizing that the remark made by Sotomayor was a racist one (although she walked this back when she realized that it that Sotomayor was the one who made this remark). So, a half-hearted yay for McCaskill, who will shill for just about any Democrat.

[New Regular Feature: More than any president that I recall, President Obama tends to use language very carefully, to, in my opinion, obfuscate what he is doing rather than to clarify. This seems to part and parcel of the Obama campaign and now of the Obama presidency. This has become a mainstay of the Democratic party as well. Another aspect of this is offering up a slogan or an attack upon some villain rather than to make a clear statement or to give a clear answer.]

Do you believe that Judge Sotomayor showed empathy when ruling against the promotion of a white dyslexic firefighter?

If you think that Sonia Sotomayor is well-qualified as a judge, with the proper temperament and background.

You don’t think there is anything fishy about which car dealerships are being shut down.

Well, they beat me to it this time. I was going to say, the Obama team would called Sonia Sotomayor’s remarks about making better decisions as a wise Latina than would a white male. I expected them to use the term inartful, but they have not used that one yet (in fact, that is not in the dictionary yet, but I guess I can safely predict that it will be within the next 2 or 3 years).

This one is a tough call. Those dealerships which are being shut down—this is a story which could rival Watergate. Will it? Will any pair of journalists go after this story? I think that there is a good chance of this. What are people going to think of their news services, who will poo-poo this story as long as they can, or ignore it? This is a story which could bring down the Obama administration. Since the news services love Obama, I don’t think that it will, but it could take out people pretty high up in his administration—cabinet members.

Bill Kristol’s prophecy: Club GItmo will be kept open as Gitmo 2.0. Obama is going to speak of all of these improvements, move a few people out, and act as if there is now greater humanity and greater transparency (or whatever), and so, pronounce that Gitmo is really okay now.

Months ago, I said how certain things would just fall in line once gay marriage was approved in the individual states; that there would be pro-gay marriage propaganda taught to children as young as kindergartners. In Alameda School District in California, the school board approve in a 3 to 2 vote, a new anti-bullying curriculum to be implemented in kindergarten through 5^th grades. It all sounds very innocent, right? This is going to be all about anti-gay family bullying. That is, we first teach these youngsters about gay families (this will be a story book about 2 male penguins who bonded at a zoo), and then we teach them, “Don’t bully.” What’s more? Parents cannot opt their children out. No one is going to tell them when this curriculum is being taught and allow them to keep their children home that day. The school board knows better, obviously. Bear in mind, these are public schools, so parents who don’t make enough money have no choice. Guaranteed, it will not stop here. By the way, do you know what problem Alameda students are not facing as an epidemic problem? Students bullying other students because their parents are gay.

Not sure if I listed this yet, but I said, in so many words, no way would Obama bring the Iraq troops out in 16 months. I think we can safely agree that is not going to happen. I also said that there would be a large force left behind in Iraq.

In a 2001 speech given at UC Berkeley in California: "I would hope that a wise Latina woman, with the richness of her experiences, would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life." This was taken from a 4000 word speech. Quite obviously, she wrote it before giving this speech (it was not off-the-cuff). As has been pointed out by dozens of conservatives, had a white male made this comment (reversing the race references), he would have never gotten out of committee. Had she said this same thing, but had said that she would, more often than not, reach a better conclusion that a Black male who has not lived that life, she would be dead in the water as well.

A more complete quote: "All of the legal defense funds out there, they're looking for people with Court of Appeals experience. Because it is - Court of Appeals is where policy is made, and I know, and I know, that this is on tape, and I should never say that. Because we don't 'make law,' I know. [Laughter from audience] Okay, I know. I know. I'm not promoting it, and I'm not advocating it. I'm, you know. [More laughter] Having said that, the Court of Appeals is where, before the Supreme Court makes the final decision, the law is percolating. Its interpretation, its application."

Avery Doninger was disqualified from running for school government at Lewis S. Mills High School in Burlington after she posted something on her blog, referring to the superintendent and other officials as "douche bags" because they canceled a battle of the bands she had helped to organize.

Sotomayor joined two other judges from the 2^nd Circuit in an appeal ruling that the student's off-campus blog remarks created a "foreseeable risk of substantial disruption" at the student's high school and that the teenager was not entitled to a preliminary injunction reversing a disciplinary action against her.

In one of the few cases dealing with the subject of race, in Ricci v. New Haven, Sotomayor ruled in favor of New Haven’s 's decision to discard the results of an exam to select firefighters for promotion because too few minority firefighters scored high enough to advance. White firefighters who had scored well on the discarded test sued. Had 1 or 2 Blacks been among those who scored in the top ten, this case would not exist. The Supreme Court heard arguments on the case in April, but has not issued a ruling yet.

You ruled against giving 10 firemen promotions which they had earned. Explain your reasoning and why you did not feel empathy toward a dyslexic white male who scored the highest on the qualifying test after months of study.

You have stated that you would be able to come to a better conclusion as an Hispanic female than a white male can, explain what that means. Do you believe that you are better qualified to sit on the court than, say, John Roberts for reason of your race and background?

Explain your reasoning of ruling against the free speech rights of Avery Doninger. [By the way, these are not gotha questions; this is a difficult ruling which I personally agree with. However, it is important to hear the reasoning of Judge Sotomayor in her more difficult case rulings.]

Explain your membership in La Raza. Is this appropriate organization for a judge to belong to?

60% of your rulings have been overturned on appeal. Please give two examples of cases where you were right and the superior court was wrong. Explain why you were right and the superior court wrong.

Would you rule against a law, if you believed the law to be wrong? Can you give any examples in your career one way or the other?

Which is most important to you? Upholding the law or exhibiting empathy when making a decision?

Lawyers interviewed praised Alito's legal acumen. "He is exceptional." "He has brilliant ability." "He is even more exceptional than Becker. He is a brilliant jurist." "To say he is outstanding is to use understatement. He's the best judge on the circuit, maybe the country." "His ability is very, very, very good. Very seriously, he's very bright." "He's pretty good in terms of making a coherent argument." "He is very smart." "He is brilliant and of unquestioned intelligence." "He has adequate legal ability. He doesn't say much and is harder to read."

Alito is measured and judicial on the bench, according to lawyers. "He has a fine, nice demeanor--he couldn't have keener demeanor." "He is demanding, but always courteous. He may occasionally demonstrate a little bit of impatience with lawyers that aren't quite getting it--this can be directed at either side; it's just a sign that his mind is working more efficiently than yours. He is never dis-courteous and never abusive." "He has an excellent demeanor--very measured." "He is somewhat reserved. He's not hostile, negative or mean. He is pleasant and courteous." "He is extremely polite and genteel." "I do not have much of a sense of him as a person. He looks bored at times."

Alito is normally a moderately active panelist during oral argument, said attorneys. "He is fairly active and asks penetrating questions. Questions can be factual or hypothetical in nature." "He is active. He asks intricate questions, both factual and legal. His legal questions often grasp upon the intricacies of the law that you haven't grasped; it's often in your favor." "He asks very incisive questions that can be factual or legal, depending on case. He is moderately active and always in control, but always polite to counsel." "He doesn't always ask questions, but when he thinks a case merits reversal, he is very active. He is prone to asking questions only when he sees a problem with what the district court did. I've seen him ask whole series of hypotheticals, but he normally focuses on the particular issues of the case." "He did not ask many questions, but those he did were thoughtful questions. He had clearly read the stuff that was submitted and knew what was going on." "He asks questions that are very pointed; get right to the heart of an issue. He's active." "He's quiet and not particularly active. He will generally have one or two concerns that he'll address."

Lawyers indicated that Alito has a very conservative outlook. "He is conservative." "He is conservative." "He is conservative." "He is conservative, but reaches honest decisions as he sees them. There is a conservative bent to his thinking." "He's conservative." "He has the reputation of being conservative." "By reputation, he is known to be one of the more conservative judges on the court, but he is forthright and fair. He tries to decide the cases in front of him in the right way." "He is strongly conservative." "He is conservative and on the far right wing of the court, but he is a truly decent person who believes in his heart that he is doing the right thing."

Attorneys remarked that Alito has exceptional writing ability and authors succinct, but thorough opinions. "His opinions are very detailed, analytical and thorough. His judgment is quite considered." "He is pretty good in terms of his writing." "His opinions are very well written. They are not as chatty as Becker's opinions, but are very thorough." "His opinions are extremely well written. There is a lot of depth. He focuses on the true issues in the case without waste." "His opinions are brilliant. They are concise, very incisive opinions." "His opinions are concise and well reasoned." "He writes short, result-oriented opinions." "His opinions are very, very conservative. He's very ideological and carefully writes his opinions to set up the next-- he plants language that moves the law further to the right. He is dogmatically conservative. His opinions are succinct, but still scholarly."

Most lawyers interviewed said Sotomayor has good legal ability. "She is very good. She is bright." "She is a good judge." "She is very smart." "She is frighteningly smart. She is intellectually tough." "She is very intelligent." "She is a good judge, but not quite as smart as she thinks she is." "She has a very good commonsense approach to the law." "She looks at the practical issues." "She is good. She is an exceptional judge overall." "She is smart. She is not as intellectual as some." "It is fair to say she has done better than many people predicted. I'd say she is in the bottom of this court --but, the competition is pretty stiff." "She is one of the few civil rights lawyers to be appointed to the court. Sometimes I think she is at war with herself. In her heart I think she still thinks from the bottom up.

When you argue before her you have the sense that she is waiting for you to give her a reason to win. If you don't give it, she will rule against you." "I am not too impressed with her. She is bright, but doesn't always get the facts."

Sotomayor can be tough on lawyers, according to those interviewed. "She is a terror on the bench." "She is very outspoken." "She can be difficult." "She is temperamental and excitable. She seems angry." "She is overly aggressive --not very judicial. She does not have a very good temperament." "She abuses lawyers." "She really lacks judicial temperament. She behaves in an out of control manner. She makes inappropriate outbursts." "She is nasty to lawyers. She doesn't understand their role in the system --as adversaries who have to argue one side or the other. She will attack lawyers for making an argument she does not like."

Lawyers said Sotomayor is very active and well-prepared at oral argument. "She is engaged in oral argument. She is well-prepared." "She participates actively in oral argument. She is extremely hard working and always prepared." "She dominates oral argument. She will cut you off and cross examine you." "She is active in oral argument. There are times when she asks questions to hear herself talk." "She can be a bit of a bully. She is an active questioner." "She asks questions to see you squirm. She is very active in oral argument. She takes over in oral argument, sometimes at the expense of her colleagues." "She can be very aggressive in her questioning." "She can get harsh in oral argument." "She can become exasperated in oral argument. You can see the impatience." "You need to be on top of it with her on your panel."

Most lawyers interviewed said Sotomayor is liberal. "She is liberal." "She is broadly inclined in a more liberal direction, but is very careful to follow precedent." "She tends to be liberal." "She is on the more liberal side of things." "She is quite liberal." "She is not necessarily pro-government." "She is not a government pushover. She is fair." "She is trying to move to the right." "She has no discernible leaning."

Lawyers interviewed said Sotomayor writes good opinions. "Her opinions are O.K, by and large." "She writes very clear and careful prose in her opinions." "Her writing is good." "Her opinions are generally well-reasoned and well-argued." "She writes well." "She is a very good writer." "Her writing is not distinguished, but is perfectly competent."

You may think you know my opinion on Sotomayor, but you would be wrong. At this point in time, I am unsure. Obama is going to nominate a liberal judge—we cannot get away from that. If we oppose Sotomayor, we do not know who is going to be behind door #2. This may be the only liberal judge in America who might actually be opposed to abortion (it is hard to tell with her, and we will not know even after the hearing how she would rule on an abortion case).

Don’t misunderstand me here; it is not a matter of picking our battles (which is important), because anyone named as a Supreme Court judge is an extremely important battle. Nor do I care about alienating the Hispanic voting population (which is what Obama wants Republicans to do, as I believe this is a very cynical political move on his part). It is a matter of, how bad is this judge? Is there anything good about her (besides her compelling life story, which means squat to me)? If she is on the right side of abortion, then she would be my gal, regardless of the other lame choices that she might make (after all, she is a liberal replacing a liberal).

Like every judge and every politician out there, we need to give her a hard look, and if we end up with a strong opinion, then we need to let this opinion be known to our Senators.

If our news organizations were worth anything, we would be getting an unbiased but tough examination of Sotomayor. So far, there are some online news services and FoxNews which have been doing this; but I don’t know if anyone in the mainstream media is doing anything other than pounding the drums for Obama.

There seems to be one clear judicial bias which Sotomayor brings to the table, and that is the old notion of racial preferences. Not only is she a member of La Raza, but she led, at Princeton and Yale, movements for more Hispanic teachers to be hired at both universities. Her fireman ruling indicates that she still believes that racial discrimination will only be ended with racial discrimination (I am playing off a Chief Justice Roberts’ statement, where he said, "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race"). In fact, I believe that it is this philosophy which is what drew Obama to Sotomayor.

One reason I could see for opposing Sotomayor is if the public could be educated about judicial activism. Unfortunately, we have too many people out there who think that judicial activism is a good thing; that, if the Congress has not passed this or that law, then the courts should step in and make a ruling instead (as some courts have done concerning gay marriage). If the public realized just how dangerous this philosophy is, then we would have the power to beat down any Obama judge of an activist mentality. However, there are just too many people out there who think, if it is a good result, and a result that they like, then it does not matter whether this occurs in court or in Congress; it is all the same to them.

It is one of the signs of our times that so many in the media are focusing on the life story of Judge Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama's nominee for the Supreme Court of the United States.

You might think that this was some kind of popularity contest, instead of a weighty decision about someone whose impact on the fundamental law of the nation will extend for decades after Barack Obama has come and gone.

Much is being made of the fact that Sonia Sotomayor had to struggle to rise in the world. But stop and think.

If you were going to have open-heart surgery, would you want to be operated on by a surgeon who was chosen because he had to struggle to get where he is, or by the best surgeon you could find - even if he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and had every advantage that money and social position could offer?

If it were you who was going to be lying on that operating table with his heart cut open, you wouldn't give a tinker's damn about somebody's struggle or somebody else's privileges.

The Supreme Court of the United States is in effect operating on the heart of our nation - the Constitution and the statutes and government policies that all of us must live under.

Barack Obama's repeated claim that a Supreme Court justice should have "empathy" with various groups has raised red flags that we ignore at our peril - and at the peril of our children and grandchildren.

"Empathy" for particular groups can be reconciled with "equal justice under law" - the motto over the entrance to the Supreme Court - only with smooth words. But not in reality. President Obama used those smooth words in introducing Judge Sotomayor, but words do not change realities.

Nothing demonstrates the fatal dangers from judicial "empathy" more than Judge Sotomayor's decision in a 2008 case involving firemen who took an exam for promotion. After the racial mix of those who passed that test turned out to be predominantly white, with only a few blacks and Hispanics, the results were thrown out.

When this action by the local civil-service authorities was taken to court and eventually reached the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, Judge Sotomayor did not give the case even the courtesy of a spelling out of the issues. She backed those who threw out the test results. Apparently she didn't have "empathy" with those predominantly white males who had been cheated out of promotions they had earned.

Fellow Second Circuit Court judge Jose Cabranes commented on the short shrift given to the serious issues in this case. It so happens that he too is Hispanic, but apparently he does not decide legal issues on the basis of "empathy" or lack thereof.

This was not an isolated matter for Judge Sotomayor. Speaking at the University of California at Berkeley in 2001, she said that the ethnicity and sex of a judge "may and will make a difference in our judging."

Moreover, this was not something she lamented. On the contrary, she added, "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."

No doubt the political spinmasters will try to spin this to mean something innocent. But the cold fact is that this is a poisonous doctrine for any judge, much less a justice of the Supreme Court.

That kind of empathy would for all practical purposes repeal the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which guarantees "equal protection of the laws" to all Americans.

What would the political spinmasters say if some white man said that a white male would more often reach a better conclusion than a Hispanic female?

For those who believe in the rule of law, Barack Obama used the words "rule of law" in introducing his nominee. For those who take his words as gospel, even when his own actions are directly the opposite of his words, that may be enough to let him put this dangerous woman on the Supreme Court.

Even if her confirmation cannot be stopped, it is important for senators to warn of the dangers, which will only get worse if such nominations sail through the Senate smoothly.

And - but there is someone else here, as we just heard, who also has a great American story, and that is Frank Ricci, who is the fireman who sued because he took a promotional test, he and others, and was denied the promotion simply because of his race.

And that's a case that came to the second circuit court, and Judge Sotomayor summarily dismissed it.

Now, that is important because it tells us a lot about her judicial philosophy. And the fact that, as we heard Judge Jose Contrera, on her court, also a Clinton appointee, was upset by her dismissal of this, and not even being willing to recognize the serious constitutional issues, that tells us that she really is a believer in the racial spoils system.

She is a person who said in a speech that she would hope that a wise Latina woman would come to better conclusions as a judge than a white male.

I mean, imagine if you heard someone say the reverse. He would be run out of town as a racist and a sexist.

And it reflects the president's idea of empathy in the judicial choice, meaning a person who cares about the standing of a defendant or a plaintiff in a case, meaning if he is rich or poor, black or white, advantaged or not, which should not be something a judge takes into consideration.

A person ought to take into consideration their personal life and philanthropy, someone in Congress ought to take into considerations in judging if taxes ought to be high or low depending on your station in life, but never a judge. Station in life is not a consideration. It is what the law is.

She is a believer in that, and I think that that's a distortion of the law, and it ought to be a reason to oppose her.

In every trial - every single trial - judges solemnly instruct American citizens who are compelled to perform jury duty that they will have a sworn obligation to decide cases objectively - without fear or favor. If a person is unwilling or unable to do that, if the person believes he or she has a bias or prejudice, especially one based on a belief that people are inferior or superior due to such factors as race, ethnicity, or sex, the person is not qualified to be a juror. Indeed, prospective jurors are told that they are not qualified if they harbor even the slightest doubt about their ability to put such considerations aside and render an impartial verdict. If the judge or the lawyer for either side senses bias, the juror is excused "for cause" - the parties are not even required to use their discretionary (or "peremptory") jury challenges to strike such a juror; rather the judge makes a finding that the juror is not fit to serve.

And the stress on impartiality does not end once the prospective jurors, after being carefully vetted for any hint of bias or prejudice during voir dire (the selection process), are finally selected to sit as trial jurors. Instead, the admonition to consider the case fairly, impartially, and without bias of any kind is often repeated many times throughout the trial. And even after that, it is standard procedure to drum the obligation into the jurors again right before they retire to deliberate on a verdict. Here is the standard instruction:

You have two duties as a jury. Your first duty is to decide the facts from the evidence in the case. This is your job, and yours alone. Your second duty is to apply the law that I give you to the facts. You must follow these instructions, even if you disagree with them.. Perform these duties fairly and impartially. Do not allow sympathy, prejudice, fear, or public opinion to influence you. You should not be influenced by any person's race, color, religion, national ancestry, or sex.

Now let's forget labels like "racist" for a moment. In our society, "racist" is a radioactive term, whether or not it's applied accurately. I want instead to home in on the premium our law places on impartiality - how noxious it regards the very notion that any important decision might be "influenced by any person's race, color, religion, national ancestry, or sex." No one is saying that those attitudes don't exist, or even that someone is necessarily a bad person for having such attitudes - sometimes such attitudes are fostered by bitter life experiences that people find themselves unable to get over. But we strive to keep those attitudes out of our law - even to the point of expecting prospective jurors to tell us honestly whether they have such biases so we can make certain they don't get on a jury. Non-biased decision-making, we tell every ordinary citizen called for jury duty, is the most basic obligation of service in the legal system.

Would Judge Sotomayor be qualified to serve as a juror? Let's say she forthrightly explained to the court during the voir dire (the jury-selection phase of a case) that she believed a wise Latina makes better judgments than a white male; that she doubts it is actually possible to "transcend [one's] personal sympathies and prejudices and aspire to achieve a greater degree of fairness and integrity based on the reason of law"; and that there are "basic differences" in the way people "of color" exercise "logic and reasoning." If, upon hearing that, would it not be reasonable for a lawyer for one (or both) of the parties to ask the court to excuse her for cause? Would it not be incumbent on the court to grant that request?

Should we have on the Supreme Court, where jury verdicts are reviewed, a justice who would have difficulty qualifying for jury service?

FoxNews interviewed Clair McCaskill (D–Missouri) about the Sotomayor nomination. When McCaskill heard the quote, “...a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life," she said that we cannot hold Sotomayor responsible for comments which others have made. When McCaskill heard that this was a quote from Sotomayor, then she supported the her opinion.

Also, McCaskill claimed that it was good to finally have someone on the Supreme Court who had grown up in poverty and had suffered extreme hardship in her life, apparently unaware of Clarence Thomas’s background.

Michelle suggests the drinking game, of taking a shot every time you hear the phrase "compelling life story" today. You should be out by lunch.

SEAN HANNITY, HOST: Welcome to "Hannity." I'm glad you're with us. Now, over the course of the past weeks and months, we have spoken at great length about problems with the Democratic Party's agenda, from economic recovery to national security to energy independence. Now many of those policies are now moving forward under the leadership of a new liberal president and his iron fisted congressional majority that will not even allow debate or amendments on some of the most important legislation in the last 30 years.

Now to defend their agenda liberals accuse Republicans of not having one of their own, they accuse Republicans of simply being the party of no.

SEN. BARBARA BOXER, (D-CA): Clearly what you can see is same old same old same old. The party of nope. Nope, we can't change, nope, nope.

ROBERT GIBBS, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: It's interesting to have a budget that doesn't contain any numbers. I think the party of no has become the party of no new ideas.

SEN. SCHUMER, (D-NY): And yet while President Obama shows leadership the other side is still adamantly sticking to policies that don't work.

HANNITY: Now, tonight we expose their political strategy by giving you, the American people, real and practical ideas from conservatives. Now, we call them Six Ideas to Save America, and we offer them in the hope that each and every one of you will see that the Republican Party can still be one of ideas and one of principle if they stand by their conservative roots. Now, our list tonight is not all inclusive. We had to choose from many ideas on many topics, but for the purposes of this show we chose to focus on the domestic policy agenda.

And tonight we are starting with a conservative plan for economic recovery that won't bankrupt the futures of our children and our grandchildren. Republican Congressman Paul Ryan from Wisconsin, he now joins us. Congressman Ryan, good to see you. Thanks for being with us.

HANNITY: All right, your tax plan is the antithesis of the Obama tax plan, and the Obama tax plan is the antithesis of Reagan economic model which led us to 21 million new jobs, longest period of peacetime economic growth in history, and the doubling of revenues for the government. Why don't you explain how you would go to opposite direction from Obama and not raise the top marginal rates, but lower them.

RYAN: We're basically saying let's go a completely different direction, let's get jobs back in this economy. A couple of things that are different than they were in the '80s. We're in the global economy and the 21st economy, and right now we're taxing our businesses so much more than our competitors are taxing theirs. And we're losing jobs. Our corporate tax rate is the highest in the world. So what we're proposing in our budget, in addition to all the spending control and the debt reduction we're proposing, based on the Obama budget, we're saying lower the top rates to 25 percent, for individuals, small businesses, and companies, and let's suspend the capital gains tax through the year 2010 so that we can actually re-grow the savings that people lost in their pension plans, their 401(k) plans, their college savings plans. These are the things we want to see come back, and the Obama administration is proposing to raise all of these taxes.

Raising taxes on the assets that make up our pensions, our savings, is not going to grow those back. Raising taxes on small businesses is not going to create jobs. And keeping taxes high on businesses so that we're taxing them more than our foreign competitors are taxing their own businesses is not going to get jobs back in this economy. We know from good economics we're going to produce more jobs. We even have economic modeling that shows we're going to produce a lot more jobs than the president is, and the difference between our budget and his, not just in taxes, is we're not proposing this gusher of new spending and this gusher of new borrowing that he is proposing in excess of the $1.5 trillion tax increase that the president is proposing.

HANNITY: The question is that elections have consequences, Congressman, the Republicans lost, and now you don't have the votes to get this passed. The question is can you peel away enough Democrats, Blue Dogs and maybe some Democrats in the Senate that are really scared to death by $4 trillion in debt on top of a stimulus on top of a TARP on top of an omnibus on top of earmarks. You think you can peel away enough Democrats to help you out in this cause?

RYAN: Right. So three things we need to do. Number one, tell the truth, number two, provide an alternative and a choice. We've done that. We haven't had luck with the Blue Dogs yet. We haven't had luck with getting the centrist Democrats to stick with us, so far they've been in lockstep with their leadership, but we've got a few more chapters to play out in this thing, and the Blue Dog Democrats, in other words, the people who call themselves Blue Dog Democrats, they have the votes and the numbers to stop this from happening. The question really, we don't know, but so far they've been pretty lockstep with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.

HANNITY: For the latest year that I've seen numbers for which is 2006, the bottom 50 percent of wage earners only pay 2.9 percent of the federal tax bill. The top 10 percent pay nearly 70 percent of the bill. The richest one percent paid nearly 40 percent of the bill. And so we already have redistribution. We already are spreading the wealth around. At what point do those people that have money say forget it, I'm not going to invest anymore or I'm going to take my money overseas?

RYAN: That's the whole point. The more you tax somebody on their next dollar, the less likely they're going to go and work for it, the less likely they are going to take risks. We need people to take risks. We need people to start small businesses. We need entrepreneurs to come up with new ideas. If we say to them we're going to raise the hurdle rate, we're going to make it harder for you to achieve that success, there's going to be less success in this country.

The president and Democrats in Congress are doing a very good job of playing the class warfare card. Playing on people's emotions and fear and envy. It may be good politics but it's really bad economics. It demoralizes the successful small businesses that are out there, and it hurts those people who want to become successful small business people. So the problem is...

RYAN: The problem is when we're saying that we have to hit the rich, soak the rich, we're already soaking the rich. The problem is the people who pay these taxes are the small businesses. Seventy percent of our jobs come from these small businesses, and when we demagogue them and we demonize them, we're going to hurt our chances of having more of them, and that means we're not going to have as many jobs.

HANNITY: You talk about the demonizing, this has become a mantra, tax cuts for the wealthy, Republicans don't care about the poor. They've been very effective in their bumper stickers and slogans and propaganda. How do you convince people that this benefits everybody, that you're going to let people or incentivize people and give people back more of their money, how do you say that that helps everybody in America when the Democrats are out there saying you don't care about the poor which I know is a lie, but what's the answer?

RYAN: Well, look, what we're proposing is we're going to give taxpayers a choice. You can have the current tax code with all of its loopholes, bells and whistles, or if you want a simplified system that fits on a postcard, two rates, 10 percent and 25 percent, it's progressive, generous and personal standard exemptions, but no other loopholes and exemptions you can have this simplified system. It fits on a postcard. We're giving the taxpayer the choice. Which system do they want? The one with all the loopholes and deductions or the simplified system with the lower tax rates?

HANNITY: The only way that this is politically viable is if Republicans get control of Congress. Look, I like this. The current system is too complicated, there's too many loopholes. You're keeping it really, really simple, 10 percent on joint filers with incomes of $100,000 25 percent on income beyond that. Alternative minimum tax eliminated. Eliminate taxation on capital gains and dividends. I think that would jump-start and put a jolt in the economy, economic growth, but the only way this is really going to happen is if you guys win in 2010, so there's a political component, and so you've got to educate people in the process.

RYAN: You can't win unless you have an agenda to run on. You can't win unless you show the American people we have a pathway for keeping America's prosperity, and the one thing we need to stop before we win is to prevent these massive tax increases on our savings, these massive tax increases on our small businesses from occurring, because that's going to hurt our prosperity, it's going to hurt our jobs, and it's going to cause us to borrow even more money.

We have never seen this kind of borrowing. It's going to hurt our currency, it's going to hurt the next generation, we want to grow our economy, so we're going to stop the tax increases first, and they we need to reform our tax code to make it easier for us to create more jobs in America.

HANNITY: Are Republicans willing to stop the earmark spending? Can Republicans at least put out a piece of paper and pressure Republicans - I'd like to see a new contract, and item number one is national security, item number three is energy independence, item number two is fiscal responsibility, and every Republican pledged not to accept a penny in earmarks.

HANNITY: I know you are. But for those Republicans that maybe are wavering, we'll let everybody know where they stand. Is that a good idea?

RYAN: I agree with you. That is a good idea. It's an idea I've been pushing in our conference. Our Republican budget has energy independence, tax reform, it cuts our deficits, it cuts our debt, and it proposes an earmark moratorium as well.

SEAN HANNITY, HOST: Two Republican lawmakers have teamed up to put the U.S. on the road to energy independence by focusing on redeveloping something that we are all familiar with. That's nuclear power. Let's take a look.

HANNITY (voice-over): Saving America starts with making viable energy right here in America. While many are exploring new green initiatives, Republicans are proposing utilizing and expanding a power source that has been around for decades. That's nuclear power.

HANNITY: Senator David Vitter of Louisiana and Congressman John Shadegg of Arizona have a, quote, "no-cost stimulus bill." Now, the bill would harness domestic energy sources to stimulate job growth.

Their proposal would explore and expand production in all energy sectors, including opening new areas for drilling in ANWR, opening more natural gas, wind, and geothermal plants, as well as streamlining the licensing of new nuclear power plants.

REP. JOHN SHADEGG (R-AZ): The reality is nuclear power is clean, it's safe, and it produces the quantities of energy that we need for a strong economy. There is no reason not to move forward other than political bias.

HANNITY: Nuclear energy currently provides about 20 percent of our nation's power and accounts for 70 percent of the country's emission-free energy. If that number sounds like a lot, well, it's not. France gets 75 percent of their power from nuclear plants.

Nuclear plants are far less costly to operate than coal or natural gas plants, and the fuel they produce, uranium, is the cheapest form of power, and it can also produce emission-free energy 24 hours a day.

In a recent Gallup poll, 59 percent of people said they were in favor of nuclear energy.

There are currently 104 commercial nuclear power plants operating in the United States. And they all have operated without a serious incident for decades.

Jim Steets is a spokesman for a company that owns Indian Power and Nuclear Plants in Buchanan, New York.

JIM STEETS, SPOKESMAN FOR ENERGY: These are extremely valuable plants, not just for this area, not just for the electricity it provides which is immensely important, but for the economic impact it has on this community.

Think of it. There are 1,100 permanent employees here. We have about $750 million economic impact in this area.

HANNITY: Steets estimates that during the winter the plant provides 20 percent of all power to New York City and Westchester County. And during the summer when energy demands skyrocket, the figure can climb up to 40 percent.

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: What I am concerned about is if there is no serious effort when it comes to the storage and safety of nuclear materials, us just going about the way we've been doing it: building these big plants with huge cost overruns that end up having all sorts of significant safety concerns. That's not an efficient way for us to go.

HANNITY: Earlier this year Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada celebrated President Obama's decision to end the government's bid to store nuclear waste in the Yucca Mountain, Nevada, site.

STEETS: Had the federal government met its obligation to accept fuel at the commercial nuclear plant across the country, then the fuel would be going to Yucca Mountain, instead, though. These utilities responsibly taking matters into their own hands, have built their own storage facilities, and these are what we call dry cap storage.

HANNITY: In addition to waste, critics point to the exorbitant cost of building the plants, which can be in the billions, often running over budget and over time, and fears of safety are continually raised, with many reminding the public of Three Mile Island. That's a name synonymous with the biggest nuclear accident in U.S. history, but the lessons learned from Three Mile Island have forced industry-wide safety standards.

STEETS: Three Mile Island is actually a good example of how well-designed these plants are to ensure safety. That is about as bad an accident as you can get what occurred at Three Mile Island, and yet there were no offsite consequences from it.

But it was a very important lesson for us. Since Three Mile Island, we've added simulators, which are exact duplicates of the control room. Every plant in the country has a simulator, where we continuously train our operators.

HANNITY: So with such impressive statistics and safety standards in place, well, why hasn't there been a new plant built in the U.S. since 1996? Well, many blame it on the highly regulated process of trying to get a nuclear facility licensed, as well as limited state funding.

But at a time when our president is emptying America's wallet, and congressional stimulus packages do little to create jobs, well, perhaps building a new nuclear power plant could do the trick.

According to the Nuclear Energy Institute, during construction it would employ 1,400 to 1,800 people and permanently employ 400 to 700 people, and that number can be higher, depending on the size of the plant.

The future of nuclear is being taken very seriously. The firm Hyper on Power Generation has developed a nuclear reactor the size of a garden shed that can produce electricity for ten years. That's the equivalent of powering 20,000 homes.

The reactor would be buried underground in concrete and would be factory sealed.

So each summer, as oil tops $4 a gallon, and global warming alarmist sound off, and everyone cries for a solution to the energy crisis, well, it's easy to see the benefits of Senator Vitter and Representative Shadegg's plan. What we can hope for is that President Obama is listening.

SHADEGG: The question is, do we buy that energy from foreign sources and create jobs offshore? Or do we produce that energy to get us to a cleaner, non-carbon energy future out of American resources? And this bill says let's look at American resources.

[By the way; I do not agree with every single one of these; I think we need lower standards in the schools].

SEAN HANNITY, HOST: Welcome back to a special edition of "Hannity." Six Ideas to Save America. Now since leaving office, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush has gone on to devote his time and energy to education reform. I recently sat down with the governor with his first interview since leaving office.

JEB BUSH, FORMER FLORIDA GOVERNOR: Thank you, Sean, for allowing me to be with you.

HANNITY: Let me ask you this. Because I know your passion is education, and I have often said that if we don't fix the educational problem - well, we're going to have - we're going to increase the crime problem, the drug dependency problem in society, and have a whole host of other problems, drugs and others. This is fundamental for America to be on the cutting edge in the future. Explain what your principles are.

BUSH: Well, I think we're in an education arms race with the rest of the world because knowledge will drive job creation, high wage jobs are only going to be created by people that can acquire knowledge, and our education system is not up to the standards that it needs to be, so the debate shouldn't be about whether the current system is good or bad and whether the alternatives that I think are better are good or bad, it ought to be where do we need to be? We need to be a lot better.

And so I think the principles that - the reform principles that could be applied start with accountability, that we need to measure things so that we know when we're doing right, when we're doing wrong, that we should have more school choice to put pressure on the current system, but more importantly to empower parents and get them actively involved in their children's education, we should pay teachers for performance, and we should have a customized learning system for the student, not focused on the system, but focused on kids that uses more technology, that allows for more options for them, that doesn't - isn't driven by seat time, it's driven by what you learn and when you learn what you need to learn you must on to the next level, and there is intervention early to make sure that kids don't lag behind.

HANNITY: Well, we know it can work because it works for some kids and it doesn't work for other kids. Let me just put out some alarming statistics for our audience just to know how bad the educational system as gotten. And we've thrown a lot of money at the problem, and money isn't the answer.

For example, there's been studies that show only 31 percent of eighth graders are proficient in science, only 26 percent are proficient in math, and Hungary and Estonia are among the nations that outperform the U.S. In a survey of 30 industrialized nations, Americans, 15 year olds, rank 21st in science and 25th in math.

Now, I think that's very telling about if you say this is connected to job creation, where the country is going to be in the next generation.

BUSH: Absolutely, and if you look at emerging nations like China and India, there's a command focus on education, and so our long-term threat is directly related to our ability to make sure that more and more of our children can learn, to acquire knowledge, and then create a new means by which this happens at an accelerated rate. So not only do conservatives need to adhere to principle as you stated in the preface of our conversation, but I think conservatives need to be on the cutting edge of reform. The world has changed. The 21st century is dramatically different than the 19th century, but we still apply a 19th century system of organization on education. It's 180 days. It's that way so that kids can get out into the farms in the summertime.

It should be - it's driven by seat time which makes no sense. It does not harness technology to the extent it could. So my hope is that, yes, let's adhere to conservative principles but let's have a passion for reform so that we can transform the things that we need government to do right. It doesn't have to be a government system, but it can be a government financed application so that no child is denied an opportunity to pursue their dreams.

HANNITY: Let me give some other statistics to show people what will happen should we not act and if we don't have educational reform which is the key idea to help save America. We know 40 percent of dropouts under the age of 24, they don't even have a job. We know that more than two-thirds of inmates in the American prison system are high school dropouts, two-thirds, we know that individuals graduating from high school literally save the government $14,000 a year in health care costs. High school dropouts earn about $250,000 or less a year than those that graduate high school, and so we will pay a price financially as a country by creating dependency and the higher proclivity toward crime and drugs if we don't fix it, and the statistics bear this out.

BUSH: These statistics are so compelling, you would think that we would all pause, liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans and say if we weren't doing it this way, how would we do it? And the answer is we would have a totally different system that's focused on the students rather than on the adults. Right now the fight in Washington and most state capitals is focused on which adult is going to have to change their lifestyle, and the focus needs to be on a customized learning for kids.

So my hope is that there could actually be common ground between people of differing ideologies to focus on systemic change. In Florida we've started along that path and we're one of the few states that has actually closed the achievement gap. We've gone from the near bottom results in terms of academic achievement as measured by the NATE (ph) which is the only standard I know of comparing state by states to being above the median, and our graduation rates have been going up every year, but there's so much more that we need to do.

HANNITY: Well, let me ask you this. Because this is now where we meet resistance, and there's a lot of resistance with teachers' unions. I've gone through the seven principles that you believe we should follow for education. Number one, we should have high academic standards. We should have measurement standardized testing. I agree with you on that. Data-driven accountability. In other words, we'll be able to tell how well you're doing. Teacher quality, school choice, which I've always been a fan of. Out-come based funding, and, for example, innovation, technology, and all this. As I look at all these things, most of them have been resisted by the left in this country and by teachers' unions, and there's this unholy alliance between Democrats and teachers' unions, so politically how do you convince people that that unholy alliance needs to be broken and we need to create new paradigms? We can talk about it all day but if it doesn't get passed politically, it's not going to happen.

BUSH: First, I think we need to be constantly reaching out to reform- minded Democrats so that they cannot embrace the dogma that you described very accurately, and I think there's

some hope in that regard. I've visited with Secretary Duncan on several occasions. I've talked to him. He was a superintendent of schools. He's seen the frustration of parents and teachers in a system that hasn't worked, and he's made changes in Chicago that have helped kids, and so my hope is from that platform he can do a lot more, and when he does Republicans and conservatives should applaud him, and when he doesn't, we should have alternatives, but we shouldn't be engaged in a 1950s discussion about this. This ought to be about the here and now because it is a pressing national issue for our long term survival and our prosperity.

HANNITY: Tomorrow night we have more of my exclusive interview with Jeb Bush. We talked to him about his political future, his family history and Barack Obama.

I must admit, I thought, in the back of my mind, that maybe Obama is just hoping that Israel will do something about Iran, and solve that problem for him. I would be wrong about that.

Since California is broke, and they want more tax dollars, what they will do is, threaten to fire teachers, shut down schools, not pick up your garbage, fire policemen and firemen, and let out half of the state’s criminals. However, I pointed out last week that Arnold and the California legislature spent $3 billion on stem cell research; and they also hire people to investigate those who hold Bible studies in their homes:

States with the highest taxes also have the greatest state budgetary problems and a job growth rate far below states with low taxes and smaller and balanced budgets.

You might think, these high tax states have better services? New Hampshire is our favorite illustration. The Live Free or Die State has no income or sales tax, yet it has high-quality schools and excellent public services. Students in New Hampshire public schools achieve the fourth-highest test scores in the nation -- even though the state spends about $1,000 a year less per resident on state and local government than the average state and, incredibly, $5,000 less per person than New York. And on the other side of the ledger, California in 2007 had the highest-paid classroom teachers in the nation, and yet the Golden State had the second-lowest test scores

A timeline of North Korea’s nuclear program and its missile testing, from 1994 to the present:

2008–2009 missile testing chronology (with links to other years and links to nuclear testing timelines as well):

Normally, I would disagree with the opinions found in Pravda, but here, the writer suggests that the US is heading into Marxism. What is quite fascinating is, about 4 or 5 decades ago, we discovered the Russian plan for overthrowing the United States (which would primarily be a cultural attack). Interestingly enough, many of the proofs of the United States decline matches up with that decades old report.

Susan Rice to coax a strong resolution from the UN concerning North Korea’s nuclear and missile testing:

RUSH: We'll start in Orlando, Florida. Diane, thank you for calling. Great to have you here with us.

CALLER: I'm like a poster child for what's happening in this economy. I was laid off by a large bank in December. I immediately called about my mortgage, because of this modification situation and was told that they don't do modifications. So they suggested I short sell my house.

RUSH: Wait, wait, wait, just a second. Let's go back here to the beginning. You got laid off by a large bank in December.

RUSH: You knew at that point that you would not have any steady income for a while but you still had to make your mortgage payment correct?

CALLER: Right, because of what I did for a living I sort of anticipated that this is not going to be a viable option the next probably two years.

CALLER: I called the banks. The first people I called was my mortgage lender. I came home and talked to my husband, we looked at our money and said, okay, this isn't a viable option, so I called my lender and told them what the story is.

RUSH: So you get laid off, you realize you gotta make your mortgage payment. Did you say you work in the mortgage department at the bank that laid you off?

CALLER: I was a legal recruiter for a large bank. I recruited the attorneys that worked for one of the largest banks.

RUSH: So they laid you off because there were no heads they needed hunted because they weren't hiring. But you still have to pay your mortgage.

RUSH: Now at this time, had the president-elect, had anybody in the government announced -- because this was December, so he wasn't immaculated yet.

RUSH: Had anybody in the government announced a mortgage rescue plan that you could avail yourself of?

CALLER: Well, they had talked about it. So after they said that there's nothing they can do -- and the other problem we had is that we were current on our montage, which we always have been.

RUSH: Oh, well, see that's a problem. If you're way behind, you would have been able to get help.

CALLER: Exactly. And that's what they said to me, that you have to stop making your mortgage payments, and then I said, "Well, this doesn't really go to what we do. We have excellent credit; we don't owe anybody anything; we own our cars; we pay everybody on time and that's not something that we're comfortable with," and then, "Well, then there's nothing anybody can do. They'll just foreclose on you if you wind up not being able to make your payments." So we waited until he came into office and again I did everything they said, I wrote letters and did everything I needed to. And in the meanwhile, I had called our new congressman -- I'm in Orlando, and we have a new very wacky congressman. I called his office because I understood retraining was going to be part of all these packages, so I offered to get retrained to do anything to get a job, and they told me they didn't know where I could go for this retraining, but they knew it was part of the package.

CALLER: This is all in late January after he was anointed. I called then because I thought, okay, if this is all in process, then right after he said, you know, we had to save everybody and we need all this money to save the mortgages, I called immediately, I started making my phone calls saying, "Okay, here's our situation." And, you know, "Can anybody help us?"

CALLER: It's very tough because hiring attorneys is not something that's going to come back soon. That's why I called and thought I could get retrained. I'll do anything, it doesn't matter.

RUSH: Well, now, wait a minute. I'm always puzzled by this retraining business. What do you want to get retrained to do?

RUSH: Yeah, but it's not available to you unless you want to start your own business doing it.

CALLER: Right. Right. I was interested in doing paralegal work because there will always be paralegals for bankruptcy attorneys in this economy or I could go into nursing or anything, I would do whatever was available.

RUSH: All right, but the point of your call is that despite all the promises for assistance with your mortgage and to be retrained, having lost your job, there has been zilch, zero, nada?

CALLER: Nothing and to add insult to injury the bank suggested that we do a short sell on our home since we're in central Florida and my home is worth less than what we owe on it.

CALLER: Right. We put it for short sell, we got an offer immediately and now the bank has come back to us and said they'll only agree to the short sale if we make up the difference between what the people have offered and what we owe on it so --

CALLER: No. And our Realtor said, well, if that was the case, if they had that much money wouldn't they just save their own home --

CALLER: Oh, yeah. And it goes on and on because then what we had originally been told is that it will be okay on our credit because it's a short sale, not a foreclosure. So then last week I called a mortgage broker and just said, you know, we'd be interested, we have children with special needs so we like to be settled down.

CALLER: Don't believe anybody. You're in it for yourself. Save yourself. I don't trust the government at all.

RUSH: Ah! There you go. You got to amend "don't believe anybody," to "don't believe a government promise." Virtually every circumstance you encountered was supposed to have relief.

RUSH: You were supposed to be able to go to a website or make a phone call and all would be okay. The president of the United States has been on television repeatedly since he was immaculated assuring people. Now, your problem, as you identified at the very beginning of your call is you were never behind on a payment. Your credit was good. Therefore, you are not a target of assistance. You are a target to be damaged. The solution -- and you also nailed this -- self-reliance, your own self-interest. You've learned who you can't depend on. You know you can depend on yourself and your husband. So snap to.

CALLER: Yes, hi Rush, I just wanted to call. You're probably not happy about this, but I voted for Obama and largely based on the race issue. I thought that he might be somebody that would help deal with the elephant in the room. If we don't get this race thing under control at some point, this country is gone. So I voted for him on the race issue thinking that he would help bring us back in. I thought his speech with Reverend Wright was excellent: Reverend Wright I understand where he came from, from his point in time. They were an oppressed minority and I thought that Obama would be helpful in bringing this country together. But after his meeting with Lula especially, and I saw, you know, he was beside himself, he was practically orgasmic with, you know, his happiness that Lula said that the problems in the world were white people with blue eyes, and it just opened my eyes to really what a community organizer is. I mean, he was not in community trying to bring businesses and whatever. He was signing signatures, trying to get more government into the community. And I see him more on the Latin level of taking over -

CALLER: Well, I'm a semi-regular listener. I don't get to listen to you all the time, but I agree with 95% of what you say.

RUSH: I said -- you must have missed it -- this is what I want to ask you about. Well, no. Several occasions I had people who were very hopeful, as you expressed you were hopeful, that the election of the first African-American president would end or really crimp racial strife in the country. People asked me if I thought this and I said no. It's going to exacerbate it. It is going to make it worse. We are going to have more race related problems in this country than we have ever had. Did you hear that and not believe me?

CALLER: Well, I did hear that. I took it into consideration. But I also had the possibility of McCain getting in as president, and all he's done is trash Republicans his whole life, so I didn't feel we were gaining much. It might just be a slower --

RUSH: No, no. I understand that, but I mean you were hoping, this is a pretty big reason to vote for Obama. You were hoping --

RUSH: -- that the elephant in the room that's dividing this country along racial lines would be obliterated. That's the primary reason for voting for him, at least as you said.

RUSH: But when you heard me -- this is a learning experience for me, okay? When you heard me say that, what was your reaction?

CALLER: Well, I went more on what Obama said. I loved the speech that he gave, the Reverend Wright speech. I loved that. Because if we don't get this under control, if we don't get -- you know, the way the Democrats have taken this country, divided it according to identity politics --

RUSH: See, this is fascinating, because from his perspective, he was not lying when he said we've got to get this under control. But what you didn't know was that from his perspective, Jeremiah Wright is right, that this country is racist and the way to get this country fixed is to return the nation's wealth to its rightful owners via high taxes, redistribution, nationalization of industries.

RUSH: And he has brought an anger to the White House about this. You can hear it, if you listen carefully in all of the interviews he's done, particularly early on in Chicago in the late nineties and the early parts of this century. So, yeah, you listen to him, you thought he was telling the truth, got this racial problem -- but his problem, the racial problem in his mind is white supremacy.

RUSH: I have an e-mail. The e-mail's interesting. I've answered this question I don't know how many times. I've explained it. This guy hasn't heard it. So here's the question. "Dear Rush: You keep saying that Obama wants to return the wealth of our nation to its rightful owners. Who's he talking about? Who exactly is he talking about?" He doesn't use the phrase. It is my phrase to help people understand Obama's philosophy. In Obama's mind this is an immoral and an unjust country and the people who have prospered, which is just anybody who has a dollar more than you have in his book, people who have prospered have done so by cheating or by stealing or by doing it on the backs of others. And this has led this nation to being unjust and immoral. All prosperity and all wealth is suspect. So when I say that Obama's policy is to return the nation's wealth to its rightful owners, I'm talking about people he would put in the middle and lower classes: Union members, minorities, any minority, people who have never succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. In other words, the vast majority of the American people.

The middle class contains far more people than the upper classes do, so in Obama's world -- and I do think he means this -- I do think it's in his heart. I don't think this is mere tactics. A lot of other liberals use it as tactics. Class warfare is a tactic because they know that there are more middle class and poor people than there are rich people and that if you can get all the middle class and poor to vote for you then all the rich voting against you cannot hurt you. In fact, you don't need to get all the poor and all the middle class voting for you, just a few of them because there aren't that many rich people. Some people use this class warfare as a tactic. In Obama's case, because of the way he was raised, because of who his mentors have been and because of the people he's listened to in church, I believe he has a personal animas against people who have succeeded. There are exceptions, of course, people who donate to him on the left, from Hollywood or big business or wherever. But for the most part, his objective is to make this country just and fair again. It's not fair that the people who have prospered have prospered. They've done it by cheating. They've done it by stealing. Ergo, we're going to have massive tax increases on the rich. Ergo, we're going to redistribute. Ergo, the unions are going to own significant portions of the automobile companies without a single dime of investment! Because, you see, they have been used.

Union employees are really the ones responsible for the wealth amassed by the Ford family, the people who started General Motors. Union people are responsible for the wealth of the people in Big Oil. Union people made it all happen. And they've had dirt and coal, sand and oil flecks kicked in their faces. Obama's going to return what is "rightfully" theirs to them, even if it means destroying the industries where these people work. You see, the dirty little secret proven time and time again, the very targets of all this munificence, the beneficiaries of all of this compassion, returning the nation's wealth to its, quote, unquote, rightful owners, the rightful owners, the little guy, quote, unquote, is going to get shafted. The little guy is getting shafted now. Unemployment last month, a 25-year high. One out of seven mortgages being foreclosed on. Jobs at the automobile companies, the dealerships, the factories being shut down where the little guy works. You think the little guy is going to be on the Chrysler or GM board of directors? No. It's going to be union leaders who are already doing pretty well.

So the intended beneficiaries of all of this compassion, of all this redistribution, of all of these tax increases on the rich, the nation's rightful owners, quote, unquote, are about to get the royal shaft again. In fact, they're getting it now. When they get fired, when they get laid off, what do they have? Empty promises from Obama to keep them in their house. Mortgage foreclosures. One out of every seven mortgages? This wasn't supposed to happen, was it? Why, Obama was going to make sure that this didn't happen to you. Well, you have your unemployment check, but yip yip yahoo. What's that going to get you? A subsistence. Meanwhile, the big guys are getting bailed out. The guys who have unfortunately profited on the back of all of you middle-class people, Wall Street guys are getting bailed out, yeah they're talking about limiting their pay, but to what? Five hundred grand a year. You'd take that, wouldn't you, as opposed to unemployment?

We can argue about the disaster that's going to be, but my only point to you is that all of the middle class, all of these people that voted for Obama, all of the recipients of this grand compassion are the ones getting screwed. They're the ones that can't pay their mortgage, they're the ones credit cards are closing them down, raising rates. They are the ones that don't have jobs; they're the ones whose mortgages are being foreclosed. They're the ones that are having trouble getting health care once they get laid off. All of this was supposed to be fixed by now, all of this was supposed to be turned around. It's just getting worse and worse and worse and worse and worse as it goes on. So the wealth of the nation, wherever it's going, it's going somewhere, but it ain't headed back to its rightful owners.

RUSH: The Power Line guys, John Hinderaker, Scott Johnson and Paul Mirengoff have an interesting post from yesterday. "The idea that President Obama's supporters trust him precisely because they believe that he frequently misrepresents his own beliefs is becoming more widespread. My friend Bob Cunningham was one of the first to explicate this phenomenon," and yesterday he sent his thoughts to Power Line. Now, this is key 'cause there's a companion story following this, so listen up.

"It has long been noticed that Obama's slipperiness had been accepted by the left during the Hope-and-Change campaign when He took positions, for example and notably, NAFTA and foreign trade generally, on both sides of an issue. They were willing to cut Him slack in most cases precisely because they just assumed that, of course!...He was lying....to someone...about the issue. Since each side could reasonably assume this --- the unions that when He made free-trade noises when He assured Canada (and then lied about THAT!) that He wasn't protectionist, and the rational liberals when He pandered to the unions on NAFTA in Ohio, for example --- they could all support Him thinking He was lying....but to the other side!....'Don't worry....we can trust Him because He's lying' was, in effect, left-wing Hope." So whenever Obama would say something the left didn't like, "Don't worry, he's just lying, he's just lying. It's okay, he's just lying to get elected," which they support.

"This has been particularly noticeable with the gay marriage issue....Carrie Prejean being exactly right when noting that her position is identical to that of His Oneness. But Obama gets a pass, of course, from the homosexual activists because

they just assume He is lying!!!...to the conservative blacks, for example, 70% against gay marriage in California." Then yesterday in the New York Times Frank Rich came as close as anyone's ever seen to acknowledging openly the "we trust him because he's lying view." Here's what Frank Rich wrote: "...Obama's opposition to same-sex marriage is now giving cover to every hard-core opponent of gay rights, from the Miss USA contestant Carrie Prejean to the former Washington mayor Marion Barry, each of whom can claim with nominal justification to share the president's views. In reality, they don't. Obama has long been, as he says, a fierce advocate for gay equality. The Windy City Times has reported that he initially endorsed legalizing same-sex marriage when running for the Illinois State Senate in 1996."

"In reality, Obama is always, always lying....to somebody....and often it IS the left...Sistah Souljah-ing them on renditions, Guantanamo, wiretapping, etc.....but where are they to go?" They just accept he's lying. And if he's lying to the right, they support him. "'Trust me: I'm lying!' I don't know, somehow it doesn't sound like a tactic that will work over the long run," say the Power Line guys, but nevertheless it is a modus operandi of President Obama. Yeah, he's an exceptionally, well, no, it was Bob Kerrey who said that Bill Clinton was an exceptionally good liar. I don't know that that's what's being said about Obama. They know he's lying. With Clinton you didn't know it, that's why he was exceptionally good at it. Obama is openly lying but his supporters love him for lying, whatever it takes to screw the right. If he has to mislead them and lie to them to get elected then the left is all for it, and this is a burgeoning theory.

The Wall Street Journal has a story that I think is a little bit of a companion to this. It is by Bret Stephens, who works at the Wall Street Journal. "Sometimes it takes 'South Park' to explain life's deeper mysteries. Like the logic of the Obama administration's policy proposals. Consider the 1998 'Gnomes' episode ... in which the children of South Park, Colo., get a lesson in how not to run an enterprise from mysterious little men who go about stealing undergarments from the unsuspecting and collecting them in a huge underground storehouse. What's the big idea? The gnomes explain: "Phase One: Collect underpants. Phase Two: ? Phase Three: Profit. Lest you think there's a step missing here, that's the whole point. ('What about Phase Two?' asks one of the kids. 'Well,' answers a gnome, 'Phase Three is profits!')

"This more or less sums up Mr. Obama's speech last week on Guantanamo, in which the president explained how he intended to dispose of the remaining detainees after both houses of Congress voted overwhelmingly against bringing them to the US. The president's plan can briefly be described as follows. Phase One: Order Guantanamo closed. Phase Two: ? Phase Three: Close Gitmo! Granted, this is an abbreviated exegesis of his speech, which did explain how some two-thirds of the detainees will be tried by military commissions or civilian courts, or repatriated to other countries. But on the central question of the 100-odd detainees who can neither be tried in court nor released one searches in vain for an explanation of exactly what the president intends to do." He announces he's going to close Gitmo, Phase Three is close it, but there's no Phase Two. Well, okay, what happens when you close it? "Oh, no, no, no, don't worry about that, we're just going to close it."

"Now take the administration's approach to the Middle East. Phase One: Talk to Iran, Syria, whoever. Phase Two: ? Phase Three: Peace! In this case, the administration seems to think that diplomacy, like aspirin, is something you take two of in the morning to take away the pain. But as Boston University's Angelo Codevilla notes in his book, 'Advice to War Presidents,' diplomacy 'can neither create nor change basic intentions, interests, or convictions. ... To say, "We've got a problem. Let's try diplomacy, let's sit down and talk" abstracts from the important questions: What will you say? And why should anything you say lead anyone to accommodate you?'" And that's perhaps the best example of this three phase philosophy. Okay Iran, North Korea, well, we're going to sit down and talk; we're going to have engagement and then we're going to have to peace. Well, you left something out. What are you going to say to them? And how are they going to react to what you say to them? "Details, details, don't bother us with details, I'm The Messiah. I'm saying we're going to have to engagement with the North Korea, we're going to have to engagement with Iran and we're going to have peace."

Yeah? Well, how? "No, no, no, no, details, you're getting bogged down in unimportant things," the Obama people say. "We're doing something never before done we're going to engage North Korea," even though Bush did it left and right and then stopped because it was worthless. Clinton engaged North Korea, sent Madeleine Albright over there to give that little pot-bellied dictator a sexual thrill, imagine that, but it apparently worked. But he's still nuking up, so we engaged and we're going to have peace. Well, how? They just tested a bunch of nukes. So that's how it works. You just say what people want to hear. You don't tell 'em how it's going to happen. It's like health care. Bring in a bunch of experts in a task force to the White House, give 'em a speech, send 'em out into study groups, two hours later have them back, ask what they said, next day say, "Problem solved." Wait a minute, what did they do? Nothing. We talked about it. So we're going to fix health care, Phase One. Phase Two, question mark. Phase Three, it's solved. We're moving on to environmental policy. That's how it works. And plus in the middle of all that when Obama lies, his own supporters love it 'cause they know he's lying and they know that he knows he's lying, and his lying is to allow him to get away with his ultra-liberalism. So it all fits and it's all okay.

In case you voted for Obama, so that he would end the Iraq War soon, the Pentagon says that we will likely be there for another decade:

RUSH: Look, folks, do you realize we're committed to spending $11 trillion over the next ten years that we don't have? In fact, the IRS reported that April tax revenues -- generally April is a huge month for income tax revenue because a lot of people wait to pay until the last moment, April the 15th. April tax revenues were down 34%, $138 billion less this April than last because of all the people unemployed. You know, that statistic right there illustrates how cutting taxes works. Supply-side, whatever you want to call it. We've got people out of work who are not paying taxes. You add that to all that Obama has spent, we're going to have a budget deficit this year of over $2 trillion. They are searching everywhere they can for money.

This is a major story, and you have not seen it on the front page of your paper nor have you heard it on the evening news. There is evidence being gathered that those dealerships which are being shut down are Republican dealerships; and those being left alive (and with less competition) are Democrats. If you think this is impossible, read on:

Maryland couldn't balance its budget last year, so the state tried to close the shortfall by fleecing the wealthy. Politicians in Annapolis created a millionaire tax bracket, raising the top marginal income-tax rate to 6.25%. And because cities such as Baltimore and Bethesda also impose income taxes, the state-local tax rate can go as high as 9.45%. Governor Martin O'Malley, a dedicated class warrior, declared that these richest 0.3% of filers were "willing and able to pay their fair share." The Baltimore Sun predicted the rich would "grin and bear it." One year later, nobody's grinning. One-third of the millionaires have disappeared from Maryland tax rolls.

Since there are some links you may want to go back to from time-to-time, I am going to begin a list of them here. This will be a list to which I will add links each week.

Politico.com is a fairly neutral site (or, at the very worst, just a little left of center). They have very good informative videos at:

Even though this group leans left, if you need to know what happened each day, and you are a busy person, here is where you can find the day’s news given in 100 seconds:

Conservative Review
Issue #77	Kukis Digests and Opines on this Week’s News and Views	May 31, 2009