Not satisfied with the 1,000,000 investigations already conducted on the matter, John Edwards thinks that millionth and one investigation may finally find le grande gas price conspiracy liberal legislators dream of in order to justify yet another power grab.

Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards says a wave of mergers in the oil industry should be investigated by the Justice Department to see what impact they have had on soaring gasoline prices.

. . .”Vertically integrated companies like Exxon Mobil own every step of the production process _ from extraction to refining to sale at the pump, enabling them to foreclose competition,” says an outline of Edward’s energy plan.

Some of Edwards’ brilliant plan to raise gas prices further:

. . .Expansion of the use of biofuels such as ethanol, including a requirement for oil companies to make available E-85 fuel (which has 85 percent ethanol) at a quarter of their stations. Edwards wants all new cars to be able to use E-85 by 2010.

Mandatory restrictions on emissions of carbon dioxide with an aim to cut CO2 and other greenhouse gases by 80 percent by mid-century.

Ah yes, ethanol, the left’s favorite silver bullet (non)solution to our energy problems.

We’re all aware of the creeping totalitarianism of the Chavez regime in Venezuela, particularly in light of his recent closure of the Radio Caracas broadcast television station. Chavez decided the popular station needed to disappear from the airwaves because they opposed his power grabs.

But in the eyes of the American left, Chavez is a hero for the cause and can do no wrong. A good example is the jaw-dropping article in the Section A of the L.A. Times today justifying Chavez’ behavior. Try to get your head around this one: The L.A. Times, one of the most politically charged publications in all of print media, and constant critic of the Bush administration, publishes this article justifying the closure of opposition media by a dictator.

VENEZUELAN President Hugo Chavez’s refusal to renew the license of Radio Caracas Television might seem to justify fears that Chavez is crushing free speech and eliminating any voices critical of him.

Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Committee to Protect Journalists and members of the European Parliament, the U.S. Senate and even Chile’s Congress have denounced the closure of RCTV, Venezuela’s oldest private television network. Chavez’s detractors got more ammunition Tuesday when the president included another opposition network, Globovision, among the “enemies of the homeland.”

But the case of RCTV ? like most things involving Chavez ? has been caught up in a web of misinformation. While one side of the story is getting headlines around the world, the other is barely heard.

The demise of RCTV is indeed a sad event in some ways for Venezuelans. Founded in 1953, it was an institution in the country, having produced the long-running political satire program “Radio Rochela” and the blisteringly realistic nighttime soap opera “Por Estas Calles.” It was RCTV that broadcast the first live-from-satellite images in Venezuela when it showed Neil Armstrong walking on the moon in 1969.

But after Chavez was elected president in 1998, RCTV shifted to another endeavor: ousting a democratically elected leader from office. Controlled by members of the country’s fabulously wealthy oligarchy including RCTV chief Marcel Granier, it saw Chavez and his “Bolivarian Revolution” on behalf of Venezuela’s majority poor as a threat.

RCTV’s most infamous effort to topple Chavez came during the April 11, 2002, coup attempt against him. For two days before the putsch, RCTV preempted regular programming and ran wall-to-wall coverage of a general strike aimed at ousting Chavez. A stream of commentators spewed nonstop vitriolic attacks against him ? while permitting no response from the government.

Then RCTV ran nonstop ads encouraging people to attend a march on April 11 aimed at toppling Chavez and broadcast blanket coverage of the event. When the march ended in violence, RCTV and Globovision ran manipulated video blaming Chavez supporters for scores of deaths and injuries.

After military rebels overthrew Chavez and he disappeared from public view for two days, RCTV’s biased coverage edged fully into sedition. Thousands of Chavez supporters took to the streets to demand his return, but none of that appeared on RCTV or other television stations. RCTV News Director Andres Izarra later testified at National Assembly hearings on the coup attempt that he received an order from superiors at the station: “Zero pro-Chavez, nothing related to Chavez or his supporters?. The idea was to create a climate of transition and to start to promote the dawn of a new country.” While the streets of Caracas burned with rage, RCTV ran cartoons, soap operas and old movies such as “Pretty Woman.” On April 13, 2002, Granier and other media moguls met in the Miraflores palace to pledge support to the country’s coup-installed dictator, Pedro Carmona, who had eliminated the Supreme Court, the National Assembly and the Constitution.

Would a network that aided and abetted a coup against the government be allowed to operate in the United States? The U.S. government probably would have shut down RCTV within five minutes after a failed coup attempt ? and thrown its owners in jail. Chavez’s government allowed it to continue operating for five years, and then declined to renew its 20-year license to use the public airwaves. It can still broadcast on cable or via satellite dish.

Granier and others should not be seen as free-speech martyrs. Radio, TV and newspapers remain uncensored, unfettered and unthreatened by the government. Most Venezuelan media are still controlled by the old oligarchy and are staunchly anti-Chavez.

If Granier had not decided to try to oust the country’s president, Venezuelans might still be able to look forward to more broadcasts of “Radio Rochela.”

Unbelievable.

Imagine if the L.A. Times applied this same rationale to opposition media in the U.S. Let’s keep in mind that many of the nation’s journalists indeed consider Bush a tyrant. There’s a strong case to be made that the L.A. Times, N.Y. Times et.al. are guilty of exactly the offenses alleged in the article - they’ve been trying to get Bush out of office since day one. And don’t get me started on the N.Y. Times leaking classified intelligence info. What if Bush decided to shut down these two papers for sedition or trying to oust the Democratically elected president? Would they run pieces in Section A insisting that these papers deserved it? That if only they hadn’t dared try to get Bush out of office then people might still be able to enjoy their Sunday editions? That they brought it on themselves?

Of course not. They’d cry foul and fight and cling with all their might to freedom of the press. There’s no way they’d stand for it if a Republican President did it. Not in this country. But in Venezuela, when their up-and-coming star and fellow socialist does it, they just can’t understand why no one is bothering to look at it from the dictator’s point of view. Poor Chavez is just the victim of media bias. The traitors at RCTV are just lucky he tolerated them for as long as he did.

If only they were so interested in the other side of the story when reporting politics in the U.S.

I bet it’s an awkward feeling when a journalist must ally with a dictator in silencing dissenting media in order to stay true to his personal political inclinations. Bart Jones and the L.A. Times should be ashamed of themselves.

The role of the judiciary, and all branches of government, is something that any good citizen should understand. Unfortunately, it seems as if a majority have no clue what the proper function of the courts is. Shockingly, this even includes current and former members of the Supreme Court.

A Supreme Court once again split by the thinnest of margins ruled yesterday that workers may not sue their employers over unequal pay caused by discrimination alleged to have occurred years earlier.

The court ruled 5 to 4 that Lilly Ledbetter, the lone female supervisor at a tire plant in Gadsden, Ala., did not file her lawsuit against Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. in the timely manner specified by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The decision moved Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to read a dissent from the bench, a usually rare practice that she has now employed twice in the past six weeks to criticize the majority for opinions that she said undermine women’s rights.

Speaking for the three other dissenting justices, Ginsburg’s voice was as precise and emotionless as if she were reading a banking decision, but the words were stinging.

“In our view, the court does not comprehend, or is indifferent to, the insidious way in which women can be victims of pay discrimination,” she said.

She’s right, 5 members of the court are indifferent to those considerations. As they should be. The court’s single function is to apply the constitution and the laws passed by the legislature.

“We apply the statute as written, and this means that any unlawful employment practice, including those involving compensation, must be presented . . . within the period prescribed by the statute,” Alito said.

And that’s all there is to it. If Ginsburg and the feminists have a problem with the law their recourse is through the legislature that can change it, not the courts.

Yuengling brewery is under attack by teamster thugs who wish to use the law to force workers into their pyramid scheme against their will.

Dick Yuengling Jr., fifth-generation owner of the brewery that bears his name, called his employees together a few weeks before their labor contract was set to expire to talk about the future of the business.

“Read between the lines,” he told them at one point, according to government documents on the management-union feud that followed.

Depending upon whom you ask, Yuengling’s speech was either a pep talk to urge employees to work harder or an ultimatum to dump the Teamsters union, which is what they did.

. . .The union has been trying to strike back, urging a boycott of the 178-year-old brewery’s product. The company says the effort has fallen flat — with “absolutely zero feedback” from the marketplace, according to chief operating officer David Casinelli.

. . .Union leaders say Dick Yuengling told the workers that he would sell the business or shut it down unless they shed their decades-long affiliation with the Teamsters. How else, they say, to explain the sudden decision to decertify?

The brewery says employees started a decertification drive on their own with no encouragement or interference from the owner.

“The company simply honored the employees’ wishes,” Casinelli said.

And the National Labor Relations Board sided with the company. It could find no evidence that management pressured employees to leave Philadelphia-based Local 830 of the Teamsters.

No surprise there, the Teamsters said. Employees were too scared of losing their $20-an-hour jobs to come forward to testify about what was said at the meeting, union leaders said.

Ah, how nice it must be that no matter the outcome or development, it is evidence of your position! “People didn’t come forward to support our claims? It’s because they are intimidated!! No one has said they’ve seen any intimidation? Clearly that’s evidence that they are too intimidated to talk!” Looks like the teamsters will have to find some other saps to shakedown.

Send the unions a message and have a beer.

Workers of the World, Unite!

Presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton outlined a broad economic vision Tuesday, saying it’s time to replace an “on your own” society with one based on shared responsibility and prosperity.

The Democratic senator said what the Bush administration touts as an “ownership society” really is an “on your own” society that has widened the gap between rich and poor.

“I prefer a ‘we’re all in it together’ society,” she said. “I believe our government can once again work for all Americans. It can promote the great American tradition of opportunity for all and special privileges for none.”

That means pairing growth with fairness, she said, to ensure that the middle-class succeeds in the global economy, not just corporate CEOs.

Not only do these failed socialist policies represent economic suicide, but we’ve learned that the removal of first order concerns from the lives of citizens eventually leads to social suicide as well. It is precisely the kind of policies that Hillary wants to implement in America that have lead Europe to social disintegration, as shown by Mark Steyn’s excellent book America Alone. This absence of responsibility in taking care of oneself has left their societies both incapable of defending against the infringement of radical Islam and utterly apathetic to the fact that they are (un)breeding themselves into dissolution.

Vandals burned dozens of small American flags that decorated veterans’ graves for Memorial Day and replaced many of them with hand-drawn swastikas, authorities said Monday.

Forty-six flag standards were found empty and another 33 flags were in charred tatters Sunday in the cemetery, authorities said. Swastikas drawn on paper appeared where 14 of the flags had been.

Members of the American Legion on this island off Washington’s northwest coast replaced the burned flags with new ones Sunday afternoon.

The vandals struck again on Memorial Day after a guard left at dawn, the San Juan County sheriff’s office said. This time, the vandals left 33 of the hand-drawn swastikas.

“This is not an act of free speech. This is a crime,” Sheriff Bill Cumming said in a statement released Monday afternoon.

Investigators believe there’s more than one culprit, based on the number of flags that were vandalized, Cumming said in a telephone interview. But authorities have no suspects, he said.

The sheriff said deputies were trying to lift fingerprints off what little physical evidence they were able to recover.

The words escape me.

They may not have any suspects but I have a few ideas about who’s capable of doing something like this. Have we not clearly reached the point where we can legitimately question the leftists’ patriotism and commitment to democracy?

If republicans are pushing an issue, I’d bet any amount that the left will at some point or another attempt to link that position with environmental damage. It’s a standard in their old, worn-out playbook.

Imagine an area the size of the state of Rhode Island with only one wagon track crossing its vast emptiness, a 860,000 acre wildlife refuge in Arizona’s Sonoran desert along the Mexican border that comprises 56 miles of what the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service calls the “loneliest international boundary in the continent.” In fact, you’ll have to imagine it, because while that description of the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge still appears on its web site, there are now 1,200 miles of illegal roads and footpaths created by drug smugglers and illegal immigrants scarring the refuge.

Right off the bat we see blame being miscast, as it’s the illegal aliens destroying this precious environment by…walking all over it! Nevertheless, there is serious concern over the dastardly republican plans to use fences!

Cabeza Prieta is just one part of the 2,000 mile-long border that conservationists are increasingly worried about. While politicians of all stripes focus on the human side of the noisy immigration debate, there is a rising concern over what illegal immigration and the U.S. response to it may do to the area’s fragile ecosystems. The $7.6 billion federal Secure Border Initiative passed last year calls for the construction of 370 miles of pedestrian fence along the border by 2008 ? 129 miles in Arizona, 153 in Texas, 76 in California and 12 in New Mexico. Pedestrian fences have so far proved useful in inhibiting human traffic, but conservationists and others worry they limit access to the habitat for endangered species such as jaguars and the antelope-like Sonoran Desert pronghorn.

Well of course they worry, it’s what the left does. They are professional worriers. I can’t quite figure out how this article got titled, though. It seems to me the main focus is on the negative impact of illegal immigrants. Security measures are also themselves simply a response to their trespasses. Yet the headline blames security, rather than what is causing that need for security. Same media crap, different day.

The Smoking Gun has a Religion of Peace torture manual on display. (warning: graphic drawings) Recommended reading for any moron who’s ever said we should avoid doing “x” or else we’re no different from the enemy. “X” has been many things in the course of this war. X=waterboarding. X=buying favorable reporting on Arab media. X=detaining terrorists without giving them lawyers. Forget X. We’re better than these 7th century beasts regardless. And these sorts of terrorist training manuals which we recover from time to time only prove it.

I hope someday we capture the madmen who made and use this torture manual and…and…and…ah, who am I kidding - and give them the best court appointed lawyers, best food, best medical care, cleanest jail cells, the most dignified handling, and bounciest bouncy balls in the aerobics room that the American tax dollar can buy. But we can never do enough. Someone will always find an “x”.

Almost the entire democratic House majority, aided by 56 wayward republicans, passed a blatant assault on free market principles in H.R. 1252: Federal Price Gouging Prevention Act. Price gouging is that terrible act of charging a price that the market will bear but that government or some other party judges to be “excessive”. Naturally, this attitudes prevents the rapid influx of needed goods from arriving into disaster areas by prohibiting the market from providing incentives for the selling of these goods. The result is a prolonged period shortages, but at least when you go to the store in search of needed supplies you can rest assured that, had they any to begin with, you wouldn’t have paid too much for them.

This particular piece of legislation is aimed only at gasoline and petroleum products, but that provides little comfort. Price controls are never good policy; but when you elect a group of demagogues you get demagogic policy.

Fred Thompson’s stealth candidacy has moved within 5 points of Giuliani in the newly important Florida primary. It’s worth noting that Gingrich, who has been polling near 10 points in most states, was not included on the list. This perhaps confirms my impression that, at least at present, Newt and Thompson supports are interchangable. Thus, whichever of these two potential candidates enters the fray first will likely pick up most of the supporters of the other. My guess is that Fred is preparing to enter the race in early June, and as a consequence a Newt candidacy is not going to happen.

Fred is also said to have an opening in crucial Iowa.