Does it even need to be said that had a white member of the Bush administration said anything resembling this nonsense to an all-white crowd of Republican voters in Georgia it would be front-page, wall-to-wall coverage for the rest of the year until the mid-term elections?

Where is the racial reconciliation we were promised from the Agent of Change during the 2008 presidential campaign?  President Obama and angry black liberals such as this federal official in Georgia have forgotten the dream of Martin Luther King, Jr. and it's sad to behold.

Of course racism is in the human heart of people from all ethnic groups, but if we can't publicly call black racists what they are, we will NEVER "move past" race in this country.

Last summer, Mr. Sestak said he'd been offered a high-ranking federal job in return for ending his ultimately successful bid to depose Arlen Specter, an act of interfering in an election that would constitute a felony if it was direct enough. The account released yesterday by White House counsel Robert Bauer says that Rahm Emanuel enlisted Bill Clinton "to determine whether Congressman Sestak would be interested in service on a Presidential or other Senior Executive Branch Advisory Board." And the post "would have been uncompensated."

So a two-term President who is now ambassador to the world is running errands for the White House chief of staff, and the plumb job he has at his disposal is a seat on the President's Intelligence Advisory Board, or perhaps the President's Commission on White House Fellowships?  And the Congressman was supposed to give up his reasonable chance at a U.S. Senate seat for such a sinecure? As a simple matter of political respect, Mr. Clinton could at least have thrown in a consulting gig with Yucaipa.

The editorial continues:

It's possible that all we really have here is a case of the Obama White House playing Washington politics as usual, which the White House refused to admit for three months because this is what Mr. Obama promised he would not do if he became President. However, this is clearly what he hired Mr. Emanuel to do for him, and given his ethical record Mr. Clinton was the perfect political cutout. So much for the most transparent Administration in history.

It goes without saying that if this had taken place 2 years ago under President Bush's watch, we'd have around-the-clock-coverage of "Sestak-gate".  I'm past the point of even dreaming that the media will be as appropriately critical of this president as it should be.  While I'm not going to lose much sleep over the Sestak "scandal", it would be nice for a special prosecutor to be dispatched, and a grand jury convened, to figure out what went on here.  There is a potential felony involved here, and the Chief of Staff of the President of the United States would be in the middle of it.

One of his finest roles came as the passionate, naive, young senator in Mr Smith Goes To Washington.  Someone has put together a powerful montage of clips from that film that serve as a reminder of what "we the people" can do when we've had enough of the corruption and back-room dealings this current congress has so blatantly flaunted since August.

The fight over health care is not over.  From The Heritage Fondation today:

In 1774, in response to the first Tea Party, the British Parliament issued a series of acts designed to control the colonists, stop their protests and restrict their liberty. The Americans called these “The Intolerable Acts.”

Obamacare is today’s Intolerable Act. In poll after poll, in town hall meetings, in popular protests and in special elections, ordinary Americans have declared their firm opposition to this scheme, only to be derisively dismissed.

This imposition of legislation is intolerable for two reasons:

• Process: The outrageous way in which this massive restructuring of one six of the economy has been pushed through.
• Substance: Huge obligation shifted to future generations, a huge lurch toward European-style welfare states.

The Heritage Foundation will have a full answer to Congress’ action tomorrow and in the days and weeks and months to come. We will do all within our power to recommend, and make the intellectual case for, the repeal of these acts. We will help marshal the full resources of the conservative movement for this cause. You can join the fight to keep America the Land of the Free today

Fortunately, there are no permanent victories or defeats in Washington.  For millions of Americans and for Heritage, Round One of this fight is over. Tomorrow morning, we are answering the bell.

The time for talk is over.

So proclaimed the most talkative president in modern memory. I can't remember when Barack Obama said that. Maybe it was during the first "final showdown" on health care. Or maybe it was the third. The fifth? It's so hard to tell when pretty much every week since the dawn of the Mesozoic Era, Obama or Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid has proclaimed that it is now Go Time for health-care reform.

So you'll forgive me if I'm somewhat skeptical about the possibility that the health-care reform debate is about to come to an end.

That's the tenor of syndicated columnist and best-selling author Jonah Godlberg's latest effort.  He isn't buying the Obama-Pelosi-Reid line that there is no time to pass a bill that WILL NOT GO INTO EFFECT UNTIL 2013...conviently, after the next presidential election.

Hmmm.  I wonder why that might be?

This latest gambit is of a piece with the White House's demonization of the health-insurance industry. I have no love for that industry myself, but let's get some perspective. As of August, the health-insurance industry ranked 86th in terms of profit margins -- behind anemic industries such as book publishing (38th) specialty eateries (71st) and home furnishing stores (84th), according to data compiled by Mark Perry of the American Enterprise Institute.

Insurance companies account for less than 5 percent of American health-care spending -- less than hospitals (31 percent), doctors (21 percent) and medicine (10 percent). But because health-insurance companies are unpopular, Democrats are beating up on them, even though if Democrats are serious about containing costs, the cuts will have to come from those other slices of the pie.

But enough with the substance.

Goldberg continues:

The health-care debate ceased being about substance a long, long time ago. Fair or not, the Democrats' plan is unpopular, period. There is simply nothing Obama can say that will change that fact before Democrats vote for it. That hasn't stopped him from talking out of every side of his mouth. But outside the Obama bunker, no serious pollster, pundit or pol in Washington disputes this basic point: Obama cannot take the stink off this thing.

The brand of health care "reform" currently being pursued by the most powerful people in our nation's government is unpopular, ineffective, and will spell economic ruin for this nation for a generation (or more).

But it might work for us...

Mark Steyn, writing for National Review Online, breaks down the broken-down economy (and collective mentality) of the Greeks.

While Barack Obama was making his latest pitch for a brand-new, even-more-unsustainable entitlement at the health-care “summit,” thousands of Greeks took to the streets to riot. An enterprising cable network might have shown the two scenes on a continuous split-screen — because they’re part of the same story. It’s just that Greece is a little further along in the plot: They’re at the point where the canoe is about to plunge over the falls. America is farther upstream and can still pull for shore, but has decided instead that what it needs to do is catch up with the Greek canoe. Chapter One (the introduction of unsustainable entitlements) leads eventually to Chapter Twenty (total societal collapse): The Greeks are at Chapter Seventeen or Eighteen.

He continues:

We hard-hearted small-government guys are often damned as selfish types who care nothing for the general welfare. But, as the Greek protests make plain, nothing makes an individual more selfish than the socially equitable communitarianism of big government: Once a chap’s enjoying the fruits of government health care, government-paid vacation, government-funded early retirement, and all the rest, he couldn’t give a hoot about the general societal interest; he’s got his, and to hell with everyone else. People’s sense of entitlement endures long after the entitlement has ceased to make sense.

Read the rest of his latest column here, and ask yourself this: "What worth having in this life does not come with sacrifice?"  There really is no such thing as a free lunch, and we're going to have to make the tough, unpopular decisions if we want to preserve economic, personal, political, and religious liberty.

What are you willing to do for those things?

Steyn closes his piece with a wake-up call to those who think "It can't happen here."

Think of Greece as California: Every year an irresponsible and corrupt bureaucracy awards itself higher pay and better benefits paid for by an ever-shrinking wealth-generating class. And think of Germany as one of the less profligate, still-just-about-functioning corners of America such as my own state of New Hampshire: Responsibility doesn’t pay. You’ll wind up bailing out anyway.

The problem is there are never enough of “the rich” to fund the entitlement state, because in the end it disincentivizes everything from wealth creation to self-reliance to the basic survival instinct, as represented by the fertility rate. In Greece, they’ve run out Greeks, so they’ll stick it to the Germans, like French farmers do. In Germany, the Germans have only been able to afford to subsidize French farming because they stick their defense tab to the Americans. And in America, Obama, Pelosi, and Reid are saying we need to paddle faster to catch up with the Greeks and Germans.

What could go wrong?

The latest from the on-going Climate Gate saga is that the UN's "experts" at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) used evidence collected from an usual source:

In its most recent report, it stated that observed reductions in mountain ice in the Andes, Alps and Africa was being caused by global warming, citing two papers as the source of the information.

However, it can be revealed that one of the sources quoted was a feature article published in a popular magazine for climbers which was based on anecdotal evidence from mountaineers about the changes they were witnessing on the mountainsides around them.

The other was a dissertation written by a geography student, studying for the equivalent of a master's degree, at the University of Berne in Switzerland that quoted interviews with mountain guides in the Alps.

I took a Geography class in college.  Maybe I can submit a paper saying this whole ruse is a pathetic back-door excuse for liberals the world over to both have a cause to fight for and attack capitalism.

Want more evidence?

From The Times of London:

The chairman of the leading climate change watchdog was informed that claims about melting Himalayan glaciers were false before the Copenhagen summit, The Times has learnt.

Rajendra Pachauri was told that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment that the glaciers would disappear by 2035 was wrong, but he waited two months to correct it. He failed to act despite learning that the claim had been refuted by several leading glaciologists.

The IPCC’s report underpinned the proposals at Copenhagen for drastic cuts in global emissions.

Dr Pachauri, who played a leading role at the summit, corrected the error last week after coming under media pressure.

There is no bottom to the pool of shame the United Nations swims in.  Luckily American politicians have avoided the hysteria, right?

See: Cap-and-Trade, the economically-crippling legislation Nancy Pelosi got through the House last June and President Obama brought up again in his State of the Union Address last Wednesday.  Cap-and-Trade has been sold to the American people as a necessary bill to combat the global warming we're now finding out people had to manipulate statistics to "validate."

If you still don't believe me that this entire thing is a sham, watch this:

Fast-forward to 2009 (and now 2010) and we are on the verge of passing the most massive piece of legislation (health care "reform") in our nation's history and all of the important debates and discussions have taken place behind closed doors (and among Democrats only).

The head of C-SPAN has implored Congress to open up the last leg of health care reform negotiations to the public, as top Democrats lay plans to hash out the final product among themselves.

The story on FoxNews.com continues:

Congressional leaders, however, reportedly are expected to bypass the traditional conference committee process, in which lawmakers from both parties and chambers meet to reconcile differences between the House and Senate versions of a bill. Instead, The Associated Press reports that top Democrats at the House, Senate and White House will figure out the final product in three-way talks before sending it back to both chambers for a final vote.

This format would seem ideal for closed-door meetings, which congressional Democrats have used many times to figure out sensitive provisions in the health care bill -- though President Obama pledged during the campaign to open up health care talks to C-SPAN's cameras.

"That's what I will do in bringing all parties together, not negotiating behind closed doors, but bringing all parties together, and broadcasting those negotiations on C-SPAN so that the American people can see what the choices are," Obama said at a debate against Hillary Clinton in Los Angeles on Jan. 31, 2008.

The response from the White House?

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said he hadn't seen the letter.

Phew.  The problem here is apparently that the administration has yet to read the letter that C-SPAN's CEO wrote to key Democrat leaders imploring them to open the health care debates up to public eyes.  I'm sure things will be cleared up when President Obama is reminded of his campaign promise.

If you aren't enraged by this entire process to bring health care under the control of the federal government, you are a progressive liberal.  Everyone else needs to call their congressional representatives and give them an ear-full.

Besides the fact that Senator Baucus is a complete tool, in this clip he blames Republicans for not reaching across the aisle to work with Democrats.  This is rubbish.  The Dem's have rammed this bill through both Houses of Congress, they've bought off anyone in their way, and refused to include the GOP leadership in their meetings.

Have one on me, Maxie boy.

Here's a clip of Steyn and Dick Morris dissecting how the Democrats got to 60 votes this week.

The UK's Daily Express printed the top 100 reasons why global climate change, the kind the world's leading proponents of statism and collectivism are discussing in Copenhagen right now, is naturally caused.  The list was put together by The European Foundation, a think-tank located in London.

Here are a few of my favorite things from the list:

2) Man-made carbon dioxide emissions throughout human history constitute less than 0.00022 percent of the total naturally emitted from the mantle of the earth during geological history.

4) After World War II, there was a huge surge in recorded CO2 emissions but global temperatures fell for four decades after 1940.

7) The 0.7C increase in the average global temperature over the last hundred years is entirely consistent with well-established, long-term, natural climate trends.

11) Politicians and activiists claim rising sea levels are a direct cause of global warming but sea levels rates have been increasing steadily since the last ice age 10,000 ago

19) A petition by scientists trying to tell the world that the political and media portrayal of global warming is false was put forward in the Heidelberg Appeal in 1992. Today, more than 4,000 signatories, including 72 Nobel Prize winners, from 106 countries have signed it.

24) It is a falsehood that the earth’s poles are warming because that is natural variation and while the western Arctic may be getting somewhat warmer we also see that the Eastern Arctic and Greenland are getting colder

Read the rest of the list here.

I realize that it is not a fool-proof, case-closed argument to make, but does it not bother anyone else that Ahmadinejad, Hugo Chavez, and Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe have all been invited to speak at the Copenhagen conference?  All three men are totalitarian thugs who want nothing more than to harm the United States, especially its economy. Does it send up any warning flare to you man-made global warming believers that these wicked leaders of suppressive regimes would be so happy to help the West all of the sudden?

What is being proposed at the Climate Summit is the massive re-distribution of wealth to poorer countries and higher taxes for Western nations (i.e. America).  It will cripple our economy and hand portions of US sovereignty over to global governing bodies.  Can we afford this right now (or ever)?  Where are American climate change activists citing the Constitution in any of this?