Tonight, Saul Anuzis, Michigan’s State GOP Chair and candidate for the RNC Chairman will join Ali, Pat, and I on The American Resolve. Tune in at 6 PM EST for the live interview.

I have been getting a lot of complaints of inappropriate comments being posted here, so i have decided to enable mandatory registration before you can post a comment.

That’s all folks.

UPDATE: I have decided on a short term transition. You all are advised to register right now, but I will allow unregistered comments to continue for a week… So starting Tuesday, November 25, you will have to be registered and logged in to comment.

UPDATE 11/25/08: Today is the day… Mandatory registration will begin at approximately 12 PM EST.

While  Attorney General Michael Mukasey’s collapse during his speech at the 2008 Annual Meeting of the Federalist Society got a lot coverage, the speech itself has not gotten a blip… So, I encourage all of you to read it in full.. but I will post a short part of it here to capture your interest:

As the end of this Administration draws near, you would expect to hear broad praise for this success at keeping our Nation safe. Instead, I am afraid what we hear is a chorus with a rather more dissonant refrain. Instead of appreciation, or even a fair appraisal, of the Administration’s accomplishments, we have heard relentless criticism of the very policies that have helped keep us safe. We have seen this in the media, we have seen this in the Congress, and we have heard it from the legal academy as well.

In some measure, those criticisms rest on a very dangerous form of amnesia that views the success of our counterterrorism efforts as something that undermines the justification for continuing them. In an odd way, we have become victims of our own success. In the eyes of these critics, if Al Qaeda has not struck our homeland for seven years, then perhaps it never posed much of a threat after all and we didn’t need these counterterrorism policies.

Wow… despite calls for the Obamas to demonstrate their faith in the public school system, they have chosen to put their daughters in an elite private academy.

After a school search that set off weeks of frenzied speculation among parents here, President-elect Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, announced Friday that their two daughters would attend Sidwell Friends School, the prestigious academy that has educated generations of this city’s elite.

Apparently public schools were never even considered.

The Obama family had considered two other private institutions, Georgetown Day School and Maret School, for their girls, Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7.

But Sidwell has long been described by some as the Harvard of Washington’s private schools. Its tuition runs as high as $29,442 a year.
 
“A number of great schools were considered,” said Katie McCormick Lelyveld, a spokeswoman for Mrs. Obama. “In the end, the Obamas selected the school that was the best fit for what their daughters need right now.”

Mayor Adrian M. Fenty of Washington strongly lobbied the Obamas to consider a public school, but that was apparently never an option.

The Obama girls currently attend private school, the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, where annual tuition runs as high as $21,480, and the family did not tour any public schools on their recent visits.

Not good enough for the Obamas… but good enough for everyone else…

Jon Henke over at The Next Right has offered a response to my earlier assessment of the conservative blogosphere. He agreed with me on some parts, and disagreed on others… I thought it be worthwhile to offer some thoughts on his response:

The Rightosphere was unable to duplicate the fundraising prowess of the Leftosphere because we aren’t really passionate about a mission. Oh, sure, there are things about which we are all passionate. Some people care a lot about taxes, others about spending, others about the war, or Iraq, or immigration, or earmarks, or any of a hundred other things. But what is the common thread? What do each of those things have to do with the other, except “it’s what our team generally advocates”? If there’s any unifying thread to the Right’s issues, it has been undone by the Republican Party’s actual behavior.

I think we are passionate about a mission, but for some reason most bloggers on the right (and their readers) aren’t so easily convinced to donate money to candidates outside of their districts. Perhaps that was a symptom of being in the majority. I consider myself an activist, but the last candidate I donated money to that wasn’t a candidate I could actually vote for was John Thune when he ousted Tom Daschle.

What is missing from our attempts to raise money for Republicans is the motivation that our efforts and contributions will mean something. Now that we are essentially struggling for political survival, we have an opportunity to harness the power of Republicans across the country to help elect conservatives get elected and take back tis country.

But in what sense are Righty bloggers trying to recreate the party in their own image from the top down? By arguing for their own conception of what the Party should be? That’s exactly what the Left did. Progressive bloggers organised the netroots by telling a story about what the Democratic Party could and should be. The communities arose because people rallied around the conception of the Democratic Party being espoused by people like Markos, Jerome Armstrong, Matt Stoller, Matthew Yglesias, Ezra Klein, Kevin Drum, Duncan Black, Chris Bowers, Josh Marshall, John Aravosis and others.

And their efforts were largely focused on supporting candidates to bring into Washington. Liberal activists have shown the ability to raise thousands of dollars for candidates in targeted districts across the country. That is how they sent a message to the Democratic Party. Money speaks louder than petitions and mission statements. Continue reading →

http://foxnews1.a.mms.mavenapps.net/mms/rt/1/site/foxnews1-foxnews-pub01-live/current/videolandingpage/fncLargePlayer/client/embedded/embedded.swf

Scary.

More from Zogby:

 Just 2% of voters who supported Barack Obama on Election Day obtained perfect or near-perfect scores on a post election test which gauged their knowledge of statements and scandals associated with the presidential tickets during the campaign, a new Zogby International telephone poll shows.

Zogby Statement on Ziegler poll.

Only 54% of Obama voters were able to answer at least half or more of the questions correctly.

The 12-question, multiple-choice survey found questions regarding statements linked to Republican presidential candidate John McCain and his vice-presidential running-mate Sarah Palin were far more likely to be answered correctly by Obama voters than questions about statements associated with Obama and Vice-President–Elect Joe Biden. The telephone survey of 512 Obama voters nationwide was conducted Nov. 13-15, 2008, and carries a margin of error of +/- 4.4 percentage points. The survey was commissioned by John Ziegler, author of The Death of Free Speech, producer of the recently released film “Blocking the Path to 9/11” and producer of the upcoming documentary film, Media Malpractice..

And of course there is a lot more at HowObamaGotElected.com.

We’re back tonight. Tonight we’ll be talking about the results of the election, the proposed bailout of the auto industry, and the Minnesota recount…

Click here to listen from 6-7 pm EST…

That is the word.

UPDATE, by Mark Noonan: Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer, it would seem.

This is the part of politics most people shouldn’t have to see – Obama wants Hillary neutralized, at least for the first couple years, and by putting her in the Cabinet, he gets that. Hillary, meanwhile, has a lot of debts to pay off and the only want to get the money is via Bill’s “speaking fees”, and he will now have influence to peddle with this “foundation”. Actually, I’m going to hand it to Obama on this one – rather clever, if cynical, political ploy.

The larger worry I’m developing is that Obama appears unwilling to make a decision which risks Obama’s political prospects. In the advancement and defense of Obama, Obama is quick and decisive…on everything else he floats around like a feather blown on the wind. The various parts of the Obama Administration may fly very much out of control – someone has to make hard and fast decisions, and if Obama won’t, other’s will – to the detriment of national policy. Honestly, its better to have a series of wrong decisions made than a series of correct half-decisions.

Obama has a steep learning curve, and for the sake of the United States and the world I hope he realizes (a) how little he knows and (b) is determined to master his job.

How ridiculous is this?

It’s not exactly at the top of his agenda, but President-elect Barack Obama says there should be a college football playoff to determine a national champion. In fact, he knows exactly what he wants — an eight-team playoff.

In an interview with “60 Minutes,” Obama addresses a subject college football fans have debated for many years, and says he will use his influence to create such a system.

“If you’ve got a bunch of teams who play throughout the season, and many of them have one loss or two losses, there’s no clear decisive winner. We should be creating a playoff system,” he tells CBS’ Steve Kroft in an interview to be broadcast Sunday.

I’m sorry, I didn’t realize this was something that the government had any business involving itself in. But then again, this is Comrade Obama we’re talking about here… he wants to control everything. Soon enough he’s going to be saying that 2+2=5 and his mindless supporters will say “Yes! This is change!”