In today's culture everyone is victim. It doesn't matter how responsible one is for getting themselves into a situation, the fault always lies elsewhere. The following WaPo article pulls out all the stops in trying to get readers to sympathize with the criminals (illegal aliens) instead of law enforcement.

Antonio Escobedo ran to get his wife Monday when he saw a helicopter circling overhead and immigration agents approaching the meatpacking plant where they both work. The couple hid for hours inside the plant before obtaining refuge in the pews and hall at St. Bridget's Catholic Church, where hundreds of other Guatemalan and Mexican families gathered, hoping to avoid arrest.

What a terrible plight for this family man who, if this opening is anything to go by, is guilty of nothing more than trying to work in a country run by a bunch of fascists!

"I like my job. I like my work. I like it here in Iowa," said Escobedo, 38, an illegal immigrant from Yescas, Mexico, who has raised his three children for 11 years in Postville. "Are they mad because I'm working?"

Yes, that's exactly why they're mad. Don't ask me why they don't arrest all those millions of people working while legally in the country, though. I'm sure that's just coincidence.

Monday's raid on the Agriprocessors plant, in which 389 immigrants were arrested and many held at a cattle exhibit hall, was the Bush administration's largest crackdown on illegal workers at a single site. It has upended this tree-lined community, which calls itself "Hometown to the World." Half of the school system's 600 students were absent Tuesday, including 90 percent of Hispanic children, because their parents were arrested or in hiding.

Cry me a river.

Current and former officials of the Department of Homeland Security say its raid on the largest employer in northeast Iowa reflects the administration's decision to put pressure on companies with large numbers of illegal immigrant workers, particularly in the meat industry. But its disruptive impact on the nation's largest supplier of kosher beef and on the surrounding community has provoked renewed criticism that the administration is disproportionately targeting workers instead of employers, and that the resulting turmoil is worse than the underlying crimes.

"They don't go after employers. They don't put CEOs in jail," complained the Postville Community Schools superintendent, David Strudthoff, 51, who said the sudden incarceration of more than 10 percent of the town's population of 2,300 "is like a natural disaster -- only this one is manmade."

He added, "In the end, it is the greater population that will suffer and the workforce that will be held accountable."

"Disproportionate" is a favorite cry of liberals when they want to try and evoke the issue of fairness in situations where it is entirely irrelevant. Criminals do not get to cry that it's not fair that they got caught while other criminals did not. Yes, the administration should go harder after businesses that knowingly hire illegals, but those cases, due to the necessity of proving what they knew about their employees, are much more difficult to build than those against individuals illegals, whose very presence in the country is all the evidence necessary. That not enough effort is being put into going after these businesses is not a reason to sympathize with the criminal behavior of illegal aliens, as the author of this article so desperately wants the reader to conclude.

The talking heads have been abuzz, salivating at the prospect of a decapitated republican party, with many already writing up the eulogies. Reports of the party's demise are, of course, premature. While the landscape this election is unquestionably bad, the party can regain its strength in the long run if it returns to a proper understanding of its role in the American political landscape.

Republicans have fared so poorly in recent years primarily because the party has abandoned the ideological framework which successfully guided the party into power and replaced it with the democrats issue-oriented, say-whatever-it-takes-to-achieve-power approach. Lacking any significant overarching ideology, the democratic party jumps from issue to issue, adopting whatever position is most popular by pandering to a public that may or may not be capable of understanding the consequences of its positions. The Republican party cannot win by adopting this appeal-to-popular-feelings approach. It lacks the ability to out pander the democrats, in large part because the media are less inclined to call democrats out on the inconsistent positions which will necessarily arise when candidates act on whim rather than coherent ideology.

Unable to actually win many new voters with this approach, Republicans are still perfectly capable of losing them. No longer given the option of a "thinking man's party," ideological voters who once saw a sharp contrast between parties now find little reason to consistently choose republicans over democrats.

The way out of the wilderness is fairly straightforward. The party must quit trying to play the democrats game. Don't berate oil companies just because democrats are doing it; point out the numerous ways in which government has forced high gas prices upon us. Don't whine about fictional "price-gouging"; defend the free market system and acknowledge the important role that price fluctuations play in simultaneously signaling a need for, and encouraging the movement of, additional resources. Don't jump on board the "climate change" bandwagon; point out the very real dangers in ceding control of so many realms of private society out of fear for an unproven environmental threat. The republican party needs to justify its existence in a political landscape in which the role of panderer is already taken. To do so it must not only pay lip service to the free market, classical liberal ideology, it must live it.

Following Senator Harkin's baffling attempt at using McCain's military service to disqualify him from the Presidency, I dispatched the following email:

Senator Harkin,

Your recent comments regarding Senator McCain's military service, and the impact it has on his qualifications for the office of President of the United States, were disgraceful and unbecoming of your office. They reflect a tragically misguided and negative view of the men and women who serve in our armed forces.

According to your statements, you consider it "dangerous" that military personnel, having outlooks shaped by their service, might be elected President. This sentiment flies in the face of our nation's history. To date, twenty-one Presidents have had combat experience, while many more served but saw no combat.

You further contended that volunteering for service, or coming from a family with a history of such, is a greater disqualification for office than having been drafted. I am having trouble apprehending the logic, and I use that term loosely, which leads you to conclude that volunteering to serve ones country suggests a character unfit for the Presidency. In my experience it is the career military personnel, and in particular those who come from a long line of such service, who exhibit the greatest willingness to place the welfare of others above their own. Perhaps to you and your party this is not a desirable characteristic; for the rest of us it is essential.

Your statements are all the more confusing when considered in the context of previous accusations. You once labeled the Vice President a coward for not serving in Vietnam, and then sanctimoniously declared that he and President Bush were "running scared because John Kerry has a war record and they don't."

Having a track record of distorting your own service, among numerous other things, for personal gain, it comes as no surprise to me that you would now contradict your previous positions and disparage fellow servicemen for partisan gain. If you had half as much honor as the average servicemen, you'd resign after disgracing yourself in such a manner. I'm not holding my breath.

A disgusted civilian,
Brian Garst

Running a typically anecdotal story on the upcoming democratic primary in Kentucky, the Chicago Tribune has thrust itself into contention for understatement of the year. Despite noting Clinton's 25+ lead in polls, the Tribune could only bring itself to admit that the state is "leaning Clinton's way".

The cause of Obama's inability to run a competitive campaign, of course, must include racism:

Like its Appalachian neighbor, Kentucky shares a large rural population, though metropolitan areas in Louisville, Lexington and the suburbs across the Ohio River from Cincinnati give Obama an opening.

Although Gershtenson said "religion and guns matter" in the Kentucky ethos, race also is a factor. "There's no doubt that there is a significant portion of the electorate that would be very hesitant to vote for a black man," he said.

Really? And what evidence exactly leads one to conclude such a thing with "no doubt"?

Kim Criglier, a married mother of four who runs a photography business and works the bar at the historic Brown Hotel, said she and her friends have debated the upcoming election.

A lifelong Kentuckian, who considers herself "a liberal, yet conservative," she acknowledges resentment to strong women exists in some parts of the state, yet "they would be more apt to vote for a white woman over a black male, sad as that is."

This is how the racism argument typically goes. The media never actually shows any empirical evidence to support their claims. Rather, they just find people who think that everyone else is racist, regurgitate their unsubstantiated opinions, and we're just supposed to throw up our hands and say, "by golly, they must be right!"

I always get a good chuckle monitoring the daily global warming hysteria. It's gotten to the point where it's impossible to turn around with running into another report on how global warming is going to make life miserable. In honor of the media's obsession of stoking fear over global warming I'm beginning this series, which will run for as long as I have material (which doesn't look to be running out anytime soon), highlighting all the myriad ways in which global warming is supposed to ruin our lives.

First up: Kidney Stones!

Latest research indicates that global warming could have another unwanted spin-off - it may spur the formation of kidney stones.

Dehydration, particularly in warmer climes and higher temperatures, will only exacerbate this effect. Consequently, the prevalence of stone disease may increase, along with the costs of treatment.

This is going to be fun.

Seattle Times Blogger Bruce Ramsey has jumped the shark in defense of the media's savior.

Democrats are rebuking President Bush for saying in his speech to the Knesset, here, that to “negotiate with terrorists and radicals” is “appeasement.” The Democrats took it as a slap at Barack Obama. What bothers me is the continual reference to Hitler and his National Socialists, particularly the British and French accommodation at the Munich Conference of 1938.

What Hitler was demanding was not unreasonable. He wanted the German-speaking areas of Europe under German authority. He had just annexed Austria, which was German-speaking, without bloodshed. There were two more small pieces of Germanic territory: the free city of Danzig and the Sudetenland, a border area of what is now the Czech Republic.

We live in an era when you do not change national borders for these sorts of reasons. But in 1938 it was different. Germany’s eastern and western borders had been redrawn 19 years before—and not to its benefit. In the democracies there was some sense of guilt with how Germany had been treated after World War I. Certainly there was a memory of the “Great War.” In 2008, we have entirely forgotten World War I, and how utterly unlike any conception of “The Good War” it was. When the British let Hitler have a slice of Czechoslovakia, they were following their historical wisdom: avoid war. War produces results far more horrible than you expected. War is a bad investment. It is not glorious. Don’t give anyone an excuse to start one.

And yet, give Hitler an excuse is exactly what they did. To the ambitious, weakness is an excuse for war. Hitler's aggression was not some big surprise. Winston Churchill saw it coming well in time to prevent it. It's painful how poorly Ramsey missed the point. If the objective is to avoid war, giving in to the demands of thugs, no matter how "reasonable," is not the way to go about it.

Even if we accept his premise that the Palestinians have some territorial claim (they don't), their true objective is much more than that. Just as Hitler's own words made his aggressive intentions perfectly clear, so do those of the Palestinians. They want the total destruction of Israel. Appeasing their territorial demands will only encourage them to pursue this goal just as it did Hitler. That is the lesson that intelligent people were able to learn from WWII: appeasements makes war more, and not less, likely. Sadly, Bruce Ramsey and an ever increasing number of the left are not included in this group.

In a dangerous partial-capitulation to socialists seeking a back-door through which to exert control over the U.S. economy, the Bush administration has chosen to list the polar bear on the threatened species list. The socialists were not satisfied, however, in the administration's refusal to submit all economic activities to the oversight of a central environmental authority.

"Protecting the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act is a major step forward, but the Bush administration has proposed using loopholes in the law to allow the greatest threat to the polar bear -- global warming pollution -- to continue unabated," Andrew Wetzler of the Natural Resources Defense Council said in a statement.

John Kostyack of the National Wildlife Federation, while gratified at the listing, saw little practical effect given the limits of Kempthorne's regulations.

"By denying a direct link between the sources of global warming pollution and the loss of the polar bears' sea ice habitat, and by denying that the polar bear will be protected from oil and gas development, they're willing to sit by and let the polar bear go extinct," Kostyack said by telephone.

...Bill Kovacs of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce praised the decision and its accompanying regulations, calling is a "common sense balancing" between environmental and business concerns.

Without the limiting regulations, Kovacs said, all carbon-emitters in the contiguous United States would have to go through a consultation process, which he said would have literally shut down federal activity overnight.

Of course, lost in this brouhaha is the fact that polar bears are not, as of yet, showing any signs that they are actually threatened:

The government of Nunavut, a territory that is home to most of Canada's Inuit people and which manages or co-manages some 15,000 polar bears, expressed disappointment in the U.S. decision.

"It is unfortunate the (U.S. government) has decided to disregard facts collected by those who have the greatest contact and longest history with polar bears," Nunavut Premier Paul Okalik said in a statement. "The truth is that polar bear populations are at near record levels."

So long as the canard of global warming is bought so easily, it's clear what is really threatened: freedom.

Following McCain's speech promising conservative judicial appointments, Jeff Jacoby has written an op-ed criticizing McCain and calling for more judicial activism as the proper role of the judiciary. In order to sustain this case, he first redefines the parameters and terms of the debate to suit his purposes.

IN A SPEECH on the federal judiciary last week, John McCain sounded the familiar conservative call for judges who know their place. "My nominees," he promised, "will understand that there are clear limits to the scope of judicial power, and clear limits to the scope of federal power." The judiciary's moral authority depends on self-restraint, said McCain, and "this authority quickly vanishes when a court presumes to make law instead of apply it."

The senator emphasized the importance of judicial modesty and deference to the elected branches of government, lamenting that "federal judges today issue rulings and opinions on policy questions that should be decided democratically." He criticized Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for not being concerned "when fundamental questions of social policy are preemptively decided by judges instead of by the people and their elected representatives."

But is it really the proper function of the courts to simply rubber-stamp laws passed by Congress and state legislatures? Is a law presumed constitutional merely because elected officials enacted it? "If my fellow citizens want to go to Hell," declared Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, a staunch advocate of judicial restraint, "I will help them. It's my job."

Notice the not-so-subtle trickery in the question: "is it really the proper function of the courts to simply rubber-stamp laws passed by Congress and state legislatures?" No one has asserted that this is the proper judicial function. Jacoby's entire argument follows from this straw-man and the conflation of two different ideas: restraint (which regards the role of the judiciary) and passivism (which regards to enthusiasm through which that role is carried out). One does not necessarily lead to another.

The examples he sites are indeed blights on the history of the judiciary. However, all also represent cases where the Constitution was not applied as written, as conservative judicial philosophy advocates.

The framing of the judiciary as the least democratic branch of government, which Jacoby dismisses, is an accurate and salient point. Courts should be deferential to legislatures, but that does not imply they be incapable, or unwilling, to apply the Constitution. The real question is: which Constitution will they apply? The one written by the founding fathers or each judges own personal interpretation of it? Choosing to apply the former does not render a judge passive. One need only look at Justice Scalia, one of the most ardent spokesmen of this argument, to see the veracity of that statement.

It is not that Jacoby's concerns are entirely unwarranted, but that there is little reason to be so worried at this point in time. The pendulum is so far on activists and flexible constitution side that it's confusing why Jacoby sees such a need to fret about passivism. I have many issues with Senator McCain, but the judiciary is one instance where he gets it right.

Despite their constant whining over gas prices and U.S. dependency on foreign oil, democrats are continuing to oppose policies which would alleviate the severity of both problems.

U.S. Senate rejects offshore drilling expansion

A proposed measure that would have opened the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge and some offshore waters to oil drilling and development was defeated in the U.S. Senate with a vote of 56 to 42.

Republican Senators Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Pete Domenici of New Mexico attached an amendment to a flood insurance bill which would have allowed coastal states to get a waiver to allow offshore drilling, but could not muster the necessary 60 votes.

Of course, actually taking steps to solve problems would make it more difficult for democrats to go around stoking hatred of oil companies and their other favorite boogeymen. Six republicans, including RINO's Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe along with my own embarassment of a Senator, Mel Martinez, also opposed the measure.

There's hope for them yet.

In 2001, Democrats in the Legislature pounded Republican plans to start a private school voucher program for poor and predominantly minority kids. They said it was unconstitutional, a drain on public schools, even un-American. In the end, all but one Democrat voted against it.

Times have changed. This year, a bill to vastly expand the same program passed by large margins.

And this time, a third of the Democratic caucus was on board.

"I'm a strong advocate for public school education, and I'm not necessarily a strong advocate for vouchers," said Rep. Bill Heller, D-St. Petersburg, one of four Tampa Bay-area Democrats to vote yes. But "the bottom line has to be the child. If good things are happening for the child, then you can justify it."

But don't you go thinking this means Democrats support freedom in education.

Most Democrats remain wary. Many continue to argue that vouchers hurt public schools —and that this year was the worst possible time for an expansion. Others fear poor and minority kids are being used as a Trojan horse for a more radical agenda: vouchers for all kids.

All students free to pursue a quality education? The horror!

Hat tip: Cato-at-Liberty