Opinions: Tom Toles Cartoons - (washingtonpost.com)

June 26, 2006. Might be the best consolidation of the GOP strategy in the last 6 years and you know it's going to work. Dems need to get out there and attack Bushie on the "Last Throes" comment. They need to hit him on Iraq constantly. Hit him on bin Laden. Dems keep getting offered better and better guns to shoot themselves int the foot with.

AEI - Short Publications:

"The fact that Hastert was responsible for the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre of the House ethics committee makes his own real estate actions even more wrongheaded."

Another angle from Ornstein. If the AEI is against this land deal, you gotta give the $$ back.

Secrets of Little Rock Road | Chicago Tribune

Finally some true criticism from the Trib. If the "Speaker" is worried about his integrity, there's no law against him donating $2 Million to some charity. He needs to pull a McCain and fight against these earmarks. Like I've said a dozen times before, the deal stinks. The coach needs to do some soul searching and get a program together. Release all the names that owned the property and their interests. Give the money back (or to charity). Eliminate earmarks in Congress. Pretty simple and doable.

Gov's trip to Washington one gaffe after another

I love Sweet. She's got the right tone and knows what's what.

Again the Hastert corruption should be probed more. Can Sweet ask some of the following questions .... What's did Hastert know? Who else knew about the land? When did he know about the Parkway? Who else profited? What about the road itself? Any influence from the Speaker's office? If there's "nothing to it," why keep the trust under wraps?

Abuse Of Power: DeLay redux

Hard to beleive that a Seattle editorial has a comment on this. They're right, it is shocking that he made 20 times more than Hillary did on Cattle futures. When you're a big landholder like the Coach, some rules don't apply I guess.

CBSNews.com: Print This Story

More of a compilation of stories on Hastert. The whole line about Alexandria Virginia is classic red herring. If you look at it, homes in Alexandria go for $1 Million+ and the only reason is because of the Capitol a few miles away. Those lobbyist work hard and don't want to be too far from work!

sweet: Sweet Column: Hastert should have revealed secret land trust

Another voice of reason and some more links on where to find more details about Little Rock Trust #225. What really stinks are those connections to the County GOP. Who could benefit the most out of this and why? It still stinks.

Hastert miffed at land debate

Even better, the "democratic media" is out to get him. Poor persecuted Denny Hastert. My ass! The reason he's claiming the media's after him is that the deal stinks to high heaven. The Chicago Tribune, noted for its two endorsements of W., has been out front on this. If he wants this to go away, make a $2 Million donation to the Boys and Girls Club. If not, release the hounds!

Lawmakers' Profits Are Scrutinized

Finally some national media on this issue. It's very suspicious and certainly doens't smell right. The ethics committee needs to investigate this. If Congressmen are helping themselves at the trough, we at least deserve to see the bill.

Chicago Tribune news: How Hastert benefited from sale

Glad to see that as well as running the Congress, the coach has time to be a land developer ....

I applaud the Trib for doing even more research on this thing. It's an important service that newspapers provide and should be encouraged to do more.

Think Progress � The Pictures of Corruption: How Hastert Used Tax Dollars to Turn a $1.5 Million Profit

More on the Hastert land "deal" and this time with some brilliant maps. The more you look at this "deal" the more it stinks.

WSJ.com - Bipartisan Query: Will 2006 Reprise 1994?

I don't think so. First off, the article by definition makes things different. The GOP is aware of where they are at, where they need to go, how to get there. Today's Iraq thing in Congress is one of many steps that they will take. The elections will start to heat up after the 4th of July and then we'll see what happens. Secondly, is the gerrymandering of districts, especially in the South. There is no low laying fruit (sic) anywhere. Dems will have to fight for marginal seats and hope they run a great candidate against an old bad one. Like I said, not too much low hanging fruit. Finally, the President is still able to raise money for the GOP. If I remember right, Clinton was so unpopular that he could barely do fund-raisers for Dems. Which basically meant that the Dems were even further behind in the money race. The other thing is that we have terrible leadership in the party. There is a consistent loser mentality that might be overcome with Rahm, but I lack confidence in Pelosi and Reid.

On the side of how the Dems could take over Congress, would require some hard work. More importantly it would also need some luck. If the Dems were able to nationalize the race in some way and make it a referendum on the President, they could have a chance. The GOP and Rove have been very effective at blunting that attack from the Dems. There have been a bunch of things that are adding up to why Bush is the worst president ever, but it hasn't crystalized yet in the country. Again with the low-hanging fruit, the GOP has burned a lot of their ammo in the last elections gay marriage bans and the like. They won't be able to that too much in this cycle. I'm still 50-50 on the Dem takeover.

Hastert's $2 million land deals questioned

This can't be good. Maybe the "Culture of Corruption" has some longer legs.

'Serious Misconduct' by NIH Expert Found

This is ridiculous. Big Pharma rapes the American people by stealing the research we're paying for and then selling us drugs at an astronomical price. Hell of a business where you get the American tax payer to fund your research and all you do is marketing. The Congress should require the drug companies to breakout how much they actually spend on research and then breakout how much they spend on marketing and commercials. The estimated ratio is about 1:4, but since they aren't required to do any of it, it's at best a guess. All you are going to see is more of this crony capitalism. The big loser is the American people.

A Bush Aide's Blunt Words

Perfect. Nothing like a hack to get nothing done. This government and this President are unbelievable. Don't the American people (which he's suppossed to represent) deserve better?

Lessons for Liberals in California

Maybe even more importantly there is general mistrust in the government period. With the Bush Administration incompetence, and the Katrina failures at all level, maybe the American people are afraid of throwing good maney after the bad. California has seen some crazy governmental SNAFUs also with the budget fights that Arnold has been having with the Democratic legislature.

I wish that Californians were being more thoughtful and scared of ballot-box budgeting. I doubt it though. The better answer (and what that crazy Grover loves!) is that government is considered incompetent and not worthy of any (new) tax dollars. The better answer is maybe a healthy look at California's constitution: No more ballot initiatives, no term limits on legislature, revising the state tax code.

. . . Or Unfair Burden on Families?:

I won't go into why it's a bad move by the Senate. Mallaby does a far more eloquent job.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/04/AR2006060400782.html

I do have a question for Session's piece.

"Finally, the American people already understand the unfairness of the death tax and support its repeal. Sixty-eight percent of those surveyed in a recent poll commissioned by the Tax Foundation supported repeal of the estate tax. Moreover, the death tax was rated by Americans in the same survey as the least fair tax ."

Who did they survey? I'd have questions about the criteria before I beleived this whopper.

Actually looking at the Web site

http://www.taxfoundation.org/

I can't even find evidence of a survey. There's PDF of a report, but no survey.

http://www.taxfoundation.org/publications/show/1635.html

This sounds kind of really bogus to me.

The other thing is the use of the black millionaire argument. It is pretty funny and effective. However the argument that the Defender nearly went out of business because of the Estate Tax is a great fish tale. How did the Chandlers, Ochs, grahams somehow keep their papers within the family without being destroyed by the estate tax? Maybe the Defender was already dying with integration. Maybe it wasn't worth that much. Maybe their was a family squabble. Who knows, but one sentence in Sessions piece sounds like crap to me

Simmering Over Summer Accessories

I'm glad that someone could more eloquently put the problem of flip-flops out there.

D.C. at Low Risk Of Attack, Says Federal Agency:

"Department officials have declined to release a list of risk scores for the jurisdictions vying for funding under its grant programs. The department has also declined to release information about the review panels, made up of law enforcement and homeland security officials from 47 states, whose recommendations were used in making decisions."

This sounds mysterious and lacking in transparancy. Why do they need experts from 47 states? What do these "peers" get out of the UASI program? What about Los Angeles? What are the monuments and financial institutions in Wyoming or Rhode Island? It's shocking the incompetence of the Bush Administration again.

Theft of Data Leads to Firings, Moves at VA

Holy cow! Is this the accountability that Americans deserve? this is way better than the accountability at the Pentagon and Abu/Gitmo disgraces. If Bush/Cheney had done this all along, they wouldn't be in the hole they are now. It's understandable to have a political philosophy and get elected and implement them. What's ridiculous is that there has been minimal accountability in Washington. I know it started with the reelection of the worst president EVER, but Congress, the media and watchdogs are finally doing their job.