If Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. read Karl Marx less and Arthur Brooks more, he might not be in such hot water. Barack's now-infamous comments in San Francisco reek of the watered down Marxism that passes for thought on college campuses these days.  "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the sentiment of a heartless world, and the soul of a soulless condition.  It is the opium of the people," Marx wrote in 1843. Barack and his apologists in the news media focused on his description of rural Pennsylvanians as "bitter" because that was the least offensive element of what he had said.  Most of those who were upset by his remarks were upset by his notion they "cling to" religion out of economic frustration.  Arthur Brooks could have told Barack the people he described as "bitter" likely are a good deal happier than most of his supporters are, or his wife seems to be.  Dr. Brooks, a professor of business & government policy at Syracuse University, demonstrates, through the wealth of statistics in his new book, Gross National Happiness, that conservatives are much happier than liberals.  It's urban liberals who are bitter, not small town folks.

Senator Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. wants to talk to our Middle Eastern enemies, notably Iran. He can't imagine a happy resolution of the war without such talks. And he seems to think this desire is something new, maybe even revolutionary. He apparently does not know that it is not at all new, and certainly not revolutionary. It is instead the fully tested "policy" of the United States for the past thirty years, ever since the seizure of power by the mullahs in 1979. We have had high-level and low-level talks, public and private talks, talks conducted by diplomats, by spooks, and by a colorful array of intermediaries. All failed.  We tried everything. The Iranians were not interested. It reminds me of that great scene from Goldfinger, with Sean Connery as James Bond spread-eagled on a sheet of gold, and a laser beam slicing through it, headed for his private parts.   "Do you expect me talk, Goldfinger?" he asks. "No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die." That's Iran. The mullahs want us to die.  Mr. Obama won't allow himself to understand this.  Perhaps his book should have been entitled The Audacity of Naïveté.

As the Obama rocket flames out and plummets back to earth, it is useful to recall how extraordinary it has been. Before the Iowa caucuses,  almost everyone thought Hillary Clinton would win the nomination easily.  She had the support of blue collar workers and most party insiders, and an enormous war chest.  If ever there were a prohibitive favorite, it was she. But until "Bittergate" erupted last weekend, she was  losing the nomination to a tyro senator whose most important resumé tic was that back in school he'd been president of the Harvard Law Review.  It took many missteps by the Clinton campaign to make this possible.  But for Barack to have been on the verge of besting Hillary is nothing short of phenomenal. What fueled the Obama rocket was that he was able to bring together two rarely united factions within the Democratic party: blacks and latte liberals.

It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress. - Mark Twain (1897) Twain's humorous quip, unfortunately, is all too close to the current reality. "Willful misconduct," a criminal offense, is legally defined as "intentionally doing that which should not be done or intentionally failing to do that which should be done, when knowing that injury to a person will probably result, or recklessly disregarding the possibility that injury to a person may result." Congress, by failing to act in the case of a clear and present danger to parts of the American financial system, could reasonably be considered engaging in "willful misconduct." And here is why.

When Democrats in the 43rd state legislative district in suburban Seattle met April 5 to select delegates to the state convention, they refused to begin their deliberations by saying the Pledge of Allegiance: "At the mere mention of doing the pledge there were groans and boos," wrote Web logger Eli Sanders, who attended the caucus.  "Then, when the district chair put the idea of doing the pledge up to a vote, it was overwhelmingly voted down.  One might more accurately say the idea of pledging allegiance to the flag...was shouted down." The 43rd is part of the congressional district represented by Rep. James McDermott (D-Wash), who just before the start of the Iraq war made a trip to Iraq to criticize U.S. foreign policy...

It's not widely recognized that the Wall Street Journal is a left-wing rag, a propaganda organ for the Democrat Party no less than the New York Times. That's because people compare the editorials, not the news coverage.  The WSJ is a schizophrenic, split-personality paper with a pro-America editorial page (yes, except for their open-borders nonsense), while that of the NYT's is so anti-American it is often outright treasonous. But if you focus on the front section news coverage, you'll see little difference between the two.  A perfect example is this "news" story of April 7 in the WSJ:  Democrats' Hopes for Seat Rise. The opening line of the story is: "A conservative firebrand with a connection to a former Ku Klux Klan leader will run for a Louisiana seat in the (U.S.) House of Representatives, raising Democrats' hopes they can pick up what has been a reliably conservative district for more than three decades." The "conservative firebrand" in question is Woody Jenkins, the Republican candidate.  That description of him is accurate - he's a passionate pro-life, pro-Christian, pro-capitalist, pro-America, pro-Western Civilization guy.  He's stand-up honest, integrity personified, born and raised in the Louisiana district (Baton Rouge) he represented in the state legislature for 28 years. I should know, for he's been a good friend of mine for a quarter-century.  And that's how I know the WSJ's smear alleging he has "a connection to a former Ku Klux Klan leader" is a complete willful fabrication.  The author of the WSJ article, Susan Davis, is not a journalist, she's a professional left-wing smear artist.