'Duplicitous and Shameful' Democrats vote to send poor kids to inferior schools.

WSJ "The waiting is finally over for some of the District of Columbia's most ambitious school children and their parents. Democrats in Congress voted to kill the District's Opportunity Scholarship Program, which provides 1,700 disadvantaged kids with vouchers worth up to $7,500 per year to attend a private school." ...."A federal evaluation earlier this year said the mostly black and Hispanic participants are making significant academic gains and narrowing the achievement gap. But for the teachers unions, this just can't happen. The National Education Association instructed Democratic lawmakers to kill it."

Obama and the Malleability of History

Victor Davis Hanson "President Obama has given a number of major speeches touching on world affairs since he announced his bid for the presidency. All have invoked historical examples — usually for moral purposes, but often at the expense of both literal and figurative truth."

The Long March From California to Copenhagen

Victor Davis Hanson ...."We are still in a great public debate between capitalism and socialism, and individual freedom versus statism — odd since hundreds of millions worldwide have escaped poverty the last 30 years due to the spread of Western-inspired free markets.".... "Nowhere is there a better example of the collective effort than in California. Politics don’t matter here; both Republicans and Democrats embrace statism, high taxes, and growing entitlements." "As California goes, so goes the nation" now has an ominous new meaning. Picture taken by Tunnel Dweller, Nov, 2009 along I-5 , San Joaquin Valley

War Is Too Serious to Involve Liberals

Frank J. Fleming , Pajamas Media "As for why, that just gets us back to the fact that liberals are terminally unserious people, and any time the country is focused on war, it just reminds everyone how pointless liberals are. When liberals took control of this country with two active wars and an economy in shambles, what was their focus? The health care “crisis.” "

Dead Wrong Durbin

Andrew C. McCarthy "The main worry in this situation is the class of prisoners known to be dangerous based on foreign intelligence information and confessions that can’t be used in court. Those detainees are being held indefinitely under the laws of war. We have held millions of enemy prisoners on this basis throughout our history. But this war is the first in which federal judges, abetted by legislators like Senator Durbin, have been given the power to second-guess the judgments of our professional war-fighters, taking it upon themselves to decide who is an unlawful enemy combatant..."

Obama: World's Will on Climate Change 'Hangs in the Balance' at Copenhagen

FoxNews "President Obama seemingly acknowledged failure even as he made a last-ditch effort Friday to salvage a climate conference in disarray, telling attendees that the world's will to address climate change "hangs in the balance.""

Failed state: California

Powerline "Progressive politics has rendered the state unable to govern itself, he writes, and the Progressive idea that the people must be empowered led to the collapse of the space that must exist between the people and the government for the public to govern and be governed well. California is plagued by direct democracy and too much government as a result."

Allahu akbar! Would you like fries with that, Infidel?

JihadWatch U.S. offers Taliban jobs and cash to lay down their arms.

"The efforts, coupled with an increased U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, are meant to weaken the insurgency and promote a negotiated end to the region's violence." H/t to Weasel Zippers

"That splashing sound you hear is liberals jumping off the health care ship."

Howard Kurtz "So the question for the Democrats is whether it's better to pass a flawed bill and claim victory -- even though most of the good stuff doesn't kick in for years -- or appear to be a totally dysfunctional party by failing to pass anything at all. Talk about unappetizing choices. "

Democrats come by it honestly, I suppose.

CivilWarHome "With the conclusion of the war in 1865 the Peace Democrats were thoroughly discredited. Most Northerners believed, not without reason, that Peace Democrats had prolonged war by encouraging the South to continue fighting in the hope that the North would abandon the struggle." Hmmmm.

Obama's "Straw Man" arguments and Rove's rebuttals

Karl Rove ""The Straw Man fallacy involves the attribution or assumption of a position, which is then attacked or dismissed, The problem is that the position dismissed by the argument is not the real 'man' or 'person', but a caricature of the real position held."—Christopher W. Tindale, Fallacies and Argument Appraisal, January 2007 "

Democrats Violate 200-Year-Old Standing Senate Rules

James Simpson , AT ""As Erickson said in today's column, what happened yesterday: "... violates the sacrosanct nature of the Senate's rules; rules so inviolable that until yesterday neither Democrat nor Republican ever risks crosses the rules in over 200 years... Hopefully the Senate Republicans now realize they are dealing with third world kleptocrats, not American legislators.""