First, I just wanted to give a shout out to Xan, the comments were a bit much and … well… just wanted to say hey, good to see ya.

Will Barack and Hillary be the political Mariah Carey and Nick Cannon  Read more 

These boys really do need to get some new talking points. Next, they’ll be saying the problem in Iraq is the estate tax. It’s like The Mighty Wurlitzer has turned in to The Puny Player Piano. AP:

“The problem is not broad strategy and policy, it’s that the bureaucracy is so inefficient and there’s been so little follow-up that the machine doesn’t work,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said. He believes red tape in Washington is the biggest obstacle to winning in Iraq.

Gingrich has joined others in suggesting that a single person report directly to Bush — and perhaps the next president — and ask: “What are the choke points? What regulations do we need to fix?”

Yes, the “war czar” idea. To authoritarians, the best solution is always more authority, eh? How’s that working out, you ask?  Read more 

Newt Gingrich blames conservatism for the Virginia Tech massacre. He just doesn’t know it.

He chalks up the violence to the American culture of recent decades, which he describes as “liberalism.”

Two terms of winger icon Reagan, two-and-a-half terms of Bushes, and two terms of the centrist Clinton (mostly under right-leaning pressure from a Republican Congress) plainly shows that the prevailing wind of the modern era is conservative.  Read more 

Can we stone Gingrich to death now? (Leviticus 20:10 ) AP:

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich acknowledged he was having an extramarital affair even as he led the charge against President Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky affair, he acknowledged in an interview with a conservative Christian group.

Which wife was Newt on by that point? And was this the affair with the staffer? So much to remember…

“The honest answer is yes,” Gingrich, a potential 2008 Republican presidential candidate, said in an interview with Focus on the Family founder James Dobson to be aired Friday, according to a transcript provided to The Associated Press. “There are times that I have fallen short of my own standards. There’s certainly times when I’ve fallen short of God’s standards.”

There’s a word for this… I just can’t think of it…  Read more 

At an event in honor of the First Amendment, Newt Gingrich said:

“[a] different set of rules” may be needed to reduce terrorists’ ability to use the Internet and free speech to recruit and get out their message.

“We need to get ahead of the curve before we actually lose a city, which I think could happen in the next decade.”

Here’s what I can’t figure out: why is freedom more important than safety to these guys when it comes to the Second Amendment, but not with the First?

Let everyone have assault rifles, but for God’s sake, don’t let ’em yell “peace” in a crowded war room.  Read more 

Update: Edited for clarity, and misatkes, and please note, it was Juan Williams, not Juan Cole, who “represented” liberalism on yesterdays All-Star panel.

Let me begin by clarifying the title of this post; it is not aimed at John Kerry, who, according to the SCLM was a has-been before he was a wanna-be and ultimately successful contender for the Democratic 2004 Presidential candidacy.

Still, it was hard to dispel thoughts of had-beens when confronted by the pairing of John Kerry and Newt Gingrich as Chris Wallace’s only guests, outside of the Fox All-Stars, of course, and it seemed that Chris was meant to be taking the pulse of two politcal dead-man walking to illustrate Gingrich has escaped the hangman, while Kerry clearly won’t be able to.

Speaking for those of us who are not fans of Fox News, I can report the hour didn’t work as planned; oh, that depressing musty odor of hasbeenery was present through-out the hour, but it attached itself to Chris Wallace, himself, the Fox all-stars, and Newt, too, and even the very idea of the Fox News Channel as we come to know and loathe it.  Read more