Columnist.
"I'm not scared of what (self-professed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed) would say at trial," Attorney General Eric Holder told the Senate Judiciary Committee as he defended his decision to prosecute Mohammed and four other accused 9/11 planners in a federal criminal court. I'm not scared of what KSM has to say in court either. I'm scared of what a federal judge might say and do.
EDINBURGH -- Do not believe that Scotland was united behind Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill's decision to grant "compassionate" release to the terminally ill convicted Pan Am 103 bomber Abdel Basset al-Megrahi in August. When al-Megrahi flew home to a hero's welcome in Libya, Member of Scottish Parliament Richard Baker recalls "universal outrage" among Scots at the sight of Scotland's flag "being waved to welcome home the Lockerbie bomber in Tripoli. It just turned stomachs" -- and produced among sensible Scots "profound shame and embarrassment."
Why isn't Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner doing better in his bid for governor? On paper, Poizner is a solid contender. He's the only Republican elected to statewide office in California who hasn't starred in a blockbuster film. He's a successful entrepreneur who struck it rich developing global positioning technology for cell phones. Later in life, he turned to public service, first as a volunteer schoolteacher, then as a candidate for state Assembly. He is a pro-choice Republican who has been able to reach out to the party's conservative base.
If the Democrats' health care package is so great, why are President Obama and Dem congressional leaders so hungry to share the credit for its passage with a Republican? It's not as if D.C. Dems are opposed to hogging the glory when a federal program is popular. So why did Obama feel the need to announce after the Senate Finance Committee passed a health care measure with the support of Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, that the measure "enjoys the support of people from both parties" -- when this one bill enjoyed the support of one lone-wolf Republican?
On Oct. 17, 1989, the Loma Prieta earthquake brought down a chunk of the upper deck of the Oakland-Bay Bridge onto the lower deck. Anamafi Moala Kalushia, 23, of Berkeley died. Twenty years later, some 280,000 cars use the bridge daily -- and it still isn't safe. In that time, Iraq has been in two wars and replaced bombed bridges over the Tigris River twice. In little more than a year, Minneapolis rebuilt a bridge that collapsed and killed 13 in 2007. In 1994, when the Northridge earthquake destroyed freeway overpasses in Southern California, GOP Gov. Pete Wilson had the two Santa Monica Freeway bridges restored within 84 days.
"What happened to global warming?" read the headline -- on BBC News on Oct. 9, no less. Consider it a cataclysmic event: Mainstream news organizations have begun reporting on scientific research that suggests that global warming may not be caused by man and may not be as dire and eminent as alarmists suggest. Indeed, as the BBC's climate correspondent Paul Hudson reported, the warmest year recorded globally "was not in 2008 or 2007, but 1998." It's true, he continued, "For the last 11 years, we have not observed any increase in global temperatures."
At the Democratic National Convention in Denver last summer, then-Sen. Barack Obama pledged to "finish the fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan." Lately Obama has toned down his rhetoric when it comes to succeeding in Afghanistan. "I'm always worried about using the word 'victory,' because, you know, it invokes this notion of Emperor Hirohito coming down and signing a surrender to MacArthur," the president told ABC in July. Apparently the "the audacity of hope" approach does not apply to the U.S. military fighting against al-Qaida and the Taliban.
