AN IMUS PROBLEM FOR THE DEMOCRATS?

Equally important, Imus gave Democrats a pipeline to a crucial voting bloc that was perennially hard for them to reach: politically independent white men.

With Imus’ show canceled indefinitely because of his remarks about the Rutgers University women’s basketball team, some Democratic strategists are worried about how to fill the void. For a national radio audience of white men, Democrats see few if any alternatives.

Don Surber comments: “Here’s an idea: Go on Fox News. Oh, Daily Kos won’t let you.”

Heh.

UPDATE: Eric Scheie thinks this was a mistake.

JOHN TAMMES rounds up news from Afghanistan that you may have missed.

MICHELLE MALKIN GETS CALLED A “PROSTITUTE” ON THE AIR: No doubt there will be an Imus-like groundswell of outrage.

J.D. JOHANNES’ IRAQ DOCUMENTARY, OUTSIDE THE WIRE, showed at Washington State University. Here’s a blog report on how it went.

UNDERSELLING CAPITALISM? “Capitalism is the villain in Barber’s piece, yet capitalism has proven time and again to be the singular cure for the poor health threatening the Third World. According to the 2005 Economic Freedom of the World report produced by the Cato Institute, the nations in the top quintile of average per-capita GDP also have the highest average life expectancy; 77.7 years versus 52.5 years for citizens of countries in the bottom quintile.”

IS THIS TRUE?

The terms of the immigration debate have turned less friendly for illegal immigrants as lawmakers and the Bush administration struggle to reach a deal in the next few weeks. . . .

time it’s Democrats – eager to show they can lead – whose fissures are on display.

In an ironic twist, the outlines of a potential deal have moved to the right – toward a more difficult road to citizenship for the nation’s roughly 12 million illegal immigrants – even as the power in Congress has shifted to Democrats, who overwhelmingly favor a more permissive approach.

When I was on Hugh Hewitt’s show the other night, both he and Mickey Kaus — who follow this issue more closely than I do — seemed to feel differently.

MICKEY KAUS: “Howie Carr condemned Imus? If memory serves, Howie Carr’s radio show was the most offensive radio program I’d ever heard when I listened to it during the 2000 New Hampshire primary–more offensive, in terms of ethnic insensitivity and general sneering inhumanity than anything I’ve seen attributed to Imus’s broadcast.”

The Imus pile-on features even more flaming hypocrisy than is usual for such things.

ENJOYING THE FIGHT, and cheering on both sides.

CATALLARCHY: GUILT VS. INNOCENCE: “Why we care.” Plus an interesting observation in the first comment.

DRM, LOCK-INS AND PIRACY: “Red herrings for a music industry in trouble”?

PENN & TELLER ON GUN CONTROL: Video here. (Via Dave Hardy).

WOLFOWITZ DROPS THE BALL at the World Bank: Austin Bay has thoughts.

TOM MAGUIRE: The audacity of outrage.

UPDATE: HO-POCRISY.

ANDREA PEYSER wants the New York Times to apologize to the Duke Lacrosse players. Plus this: “But the biggest losers may be the ones you’ll never hear about. These are the genuine victims of sexual assault: women who don’t fabricate tales of brutality, or seek out the richest, whitest men to falsely accuse of forcing them into sex. Who will believe a rape victim now?”

UPDATE: More on the Times’ coverage: “The worst journalist covering the case was the New York Times’ Duff Wilson.”

BLOGOMETER: “If you ever wanted proof that Dems are more in love with their own idea of Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) than what Obama actually is, you need look no further than a poll of MoveOn.org members following their online Townhall on Iraq forum.” Meanwhile, Kos loves Bill Richardson.

I KNEW THIS WAS COMING, but it’s still cool:

Private space exploration took a potentially significant step forward this week as Nevada-based Bigelow Aerospace announced plans to send a series of inflatable space stations into orbit over the next decade.

The spacecraft, initially designed by NASA for use with the International Space Station, would be available to train astronauts from nations not currently active in space, as well as companies that could manufacture unique products in weightlessness. . . .

The announcement comes at a heady time for private space entrepreneurs. The rocket company SpaceX, founded by Pay Pal billionaire Elon Musk, had its most successful test launch to date last month. Voters in New Mexico this month passed a referendum to raise taxes to help build a spaceport for Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic space tourism company.

Bigelow already has a prototype of its planned station in orbit and is scheduled to launch a second on a Russian rocket later this month. The prototype Genesis II will launch from Orenberg, Russia, and will carry a payload that includes a Madagascar giant hissing cockroach, scorpions, an ant farm, and an internal camera to watch their acclimation to space. The first Bigelow vessel designed to house a human crew, called Sundancer, is now in development and is scheduled to launch by the end of 2010.

I wish them luck.

AN AL QAEDA INDICTMENT IN OHIO:

A federal grand jury has indicted an Ohio man on charges of conspiring with the al-Qaeda terrorist network to bomb targets overseas and in the United States, possibly using remote-controlled boats and aircraft.

The grand jury in Columbus returned a three-count indictment yesterday against Christopher Paul, 43, who prosecutors said received training at terrorist camps in Afghanistan in the early 1990s, joined al-Qaeda and later trained co-conspirators in Germany in the use of explosives. The indictment was announced today by Justice Department officials in Ohio and Washington. . . . From 1989 through the present, the Justice Department said in a statement, Paul participated in “a conspiracy to destroy property overseas and murder and maim persons located outside the United States.” As part of the alleged conspiracy, it said, he provided money and equipment to individuals abroad and trained co-conspirators in the United States to prepare them “to fight violent jihad overseas.”

On the other hand, this sounds a bit thin:

In recent years, the statement said, Paul used Columbus residences to store items that included a laser range finder, a night vision scope, literature on explosives, “remote control items” and survival gear.

What red-blooded American doesn’t have at least most of this stuff? Hard to tell how much there is to this story, but I suppose we’ll learn more as it progresses.

RICHARD MINITER WAS THERE when the bomb went off in Baghdad today, and posts a report.

UPDATE: Video here.

DON IMUS FIRED: “It appears Don Imus may be finished in talk radio.” I’ve never liked Imus, and his comments were disgraceful, but this seems like it’s been a feeding frenzy. And, really, who cares what Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson think about proper public demeanor?

UPDATE: C.J. Burch emails:

Imus is fired, maybe that’s a good thing, I don’t know. I’m having a hard time reconciling that with the fact that Rosie O’Donnell still has a job, though.

And Barry Dauphin writes:

I’ve never really “gotten” the appeal of Imus among the (pseudo)intelligentsia. He’s always seemed like a mean ex-drunk to me. But the idea that he’s finished in radio is quite silly. He’ll be back long before Sharpton shows contrition about the Duke rape case.

Well, that’s probably true.

WOMEN’S HEALTH CLINICS IN AFGHANISTAN: An interesting slideshow at Yahoo News.

PELOSI’S POLLING:

Speaker Pelosi’s approval ratings are far from disastrous. However, the most recent AP-Ipsos poll, completed on the day Ms. Pelosi met with Bashar Assad in Damascus, showed a 14 point drop in the Speaker’s net approval rating since the last survey taken in mid-January shortly after her inauguration. The figures in January were 51% approval and 35% disapproval; last week’s figures were 46% approval and 44% disapproval.

But she’s polling favorably with fashion guru Manolo:

All the Speaker Nancy did was put on the scarf. It is not as if she was showing her cultural sensitivity to Islam by helping to stone the adultress, or giving the fifty lashes of vigor to the woman driver. It was just the scarf, the same sort of head covering worn by the Laura Bush when she visited the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, or by the Condi Rice when she visited the mosque in Tajikistan.

The Manolo has long thought that the Nancy Pelosi is one of the better dressed persons in Washington. She has the confident and the colorful personal style and dresses in the high quality, good-looking clothing that is appropriate to her position and age. In short she knows how to dress.

Read the whole thing!

ARE YOU EXPERIENCED?

Have you ever been experienced? “Wonder why so many of the news articles you read, or steam over, are lacking essential information or perspective? Wonder no longer. Knowledge and experience of the subject is only a ‘plus.'”

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Meet the Proud Pork Men:

The arrogance of career politicians was on full display today when Senator Daniel Inouye (D-HA) took to the Senate floor to boast of his and Senator Ted Stevens’ (R-AK) long careers of accumulating pork on the backs of American taxpayers. In a tribute to Senator Stevens’ new status as the longest serving Republican U.S. Senator, Senator Inouye declared:

He and I received the crown of being pork men of the year. We are the number one add-ons in the United State Senate. Mr. President, I’m proud to call Ted Stevens my brother, and I hope that we can continue this brothership for as long as we’re here.

“It’s a sad day in America when the longest serving Republican in U.S. Senate history is praised by an even longer serving Senator for setting the record for fleecing American taxpayers of their hard-earned money,” Club for Growth President Pat Toomey declared. “After thirty-nine years in the U.S. Senate, one would have hoped that Senator Stevens would have accomplished something more meaningful than petty parochial pork projects like a $223 million “Bridge to Nowhere” and a $1.5 million bus stop.”

“Instead of heaping praise on the Senate’s worst porker, the Senate should impose the reform rules requiring 100% earmark transparency that it had unanimously passed earlier this year,” Mr. Toomey continued.

Despite the recent elections, the Pork Party remains in control.

LARRY KUDLOW: DON’T GO WOBBLY:

Although White House Budget Director Rob Portman told me on Tuesday’s show that there would be no compromise deal on the pork section of the Iraq funding bill, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) told me last night there could in fact be a deal.

Today’s Wall Street Journal also suggests a deal could be in the works. Apparently, rumors of pork’s death have been greatly exaggerated.

Any compromise deal on this roughly $25 billion of pork would seriously dilute the President’s strong message that he’s been selling for nearly ten straight days in his constant criticism of the Democrats.

A little backbone from the White House, please?

MICHAEL YON: British forces at war, as witnessed by an American. “These soldiers are so good that I have requested from British commanders to be allowed to stay longer.”