As America approaches another debate on health care reform, politicians and pressure groups will not doubt point to the Canadian system as a model for reform. In Canada, after all, everyone has access to health care. While that is true to some extent, it’s important to pay attention to the statistics.

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Pundits profess to be amazed at the way in which Congress has treated President Obama’s request for funding to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay.

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The lamposts in front of the Supreme Court building in Washington depict “Lady Justice” wearing a blindfold. The image is one of the most popular depictions of the concept of justice and is meant to convey the idea that those who decide ought to do so on the basis of the facts and the law, and not on the basis of one’s power, position, or connexions.

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Arlen Spector’s departure from the Republican party is a delicious irony.  For the past two decades, conservatives in the party have been told that they need to abandon their principles in order to protect “northeast Republicans” like Arlen Spector, Lowell Weicker, Susan Collins, James Jeffords and Olympia Snow. 

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Forget the panic it caused in lower Manhattan.  And really, who cares about the cost?  The far more interesting and urgent question is how much damage was done to the environment by the wasteful Air Force One photo-op?

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Only three weeks ago, Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Spector appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe and articulated a number of reasons why it was important for him to remain a Republican:

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In watching Barack Obama’s apology tour unfold over the past few weeks, I’ve been wondering two things.

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President Obama now finds himself at the centre of a political correctness debate.  During an appearance on the Jay Leno show (just what was he doing there???), the President made a joke about his bowling skills, stating that his most recent outing at the lanes was ”like the Special Olympics or something.”

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Treasury Secretary Tim Gheitner appeared before Congress yesterday without a plan for dealing with the economic crisis.  In explaining his failure, he whined that “I`ve only been on the job for two weeks.”

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So, the guy who is ultimately going to be responsible for sending me a tax bill each year gets away with failing to pay almost $40,000 in taxes.  If that were me, I’d be in jail.  Apparently, however, if you’re a friend of Mr. Obama, you get a cabinet post.

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Before anyone is tempted to applaud the clown who threw a shoe at the President, one ought to ask what would have happened if that same “journalist” performed the same stunt at one of Sadam’s news conferences — assuming there were any.

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In case you missed it —- and there’s a very good chance you did given its prominence in the news pages — someone attempted to burn down Alaska Governor and former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s church.  The arsonist started a fire while women and children were inside making Christmas decorations.  I say you might have missed it, because in those papers in which it ran, the story was largely relegated to a one-paragraph squib on the pages where they cover automobile accidents or “news of the weird.”

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The really disturbing thing about the incident involving “Joe the Plumber” is the speed with which the media — which is in efect to say Obama’s staff — sprang into action to dig up all sorts of dirt on the poor man.  Within days of his asking a simple question, we knew more about Joe the Plumber’s private life than we do about Obama’s — and he’s been on the campaign trail for two years.

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I’ve been a churchgoer all my life.  Over the years, I’ve had the opportunity to hear all kinds of preachers.  Some of them have been boring, some exciting, but most have been just simple men or women giving a pretty traditional take on the Gospel.  During all this time, however, I’ve never heard any of them use as much profanity as the ministers who occupy the pulpit at Barak Obama’s church.

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Quote of the day:

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The Kentucky and West Virginia primary results should be a warning sign to Democrats.  After all, it says a lot about a candidate that large portions of the voting public still refuse to cast their ballots for the “presumptive nominee.”  These voters have been told for weeks that “the race is over.”  Yet, they persist in voting for the other candidate.  What is it about Barak Obama that causes hundreds of thousands of loyal Democrats to simply throw their votes away?  The easy answer is race, but that’s too simplistic.  All these people can’t be closet members of the KKK.

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Politicians of all stripes are outraged by rising gas prices.  Yet, many of those same politicians claim that they want America to reduce CO2 emissions because doing so would be good for the environment.  However, given what we know about the effect of price on consumption, shouldn’t our supposedly environmentally conscious political leaders be rooting for gasoline prices to go ever higher? 

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The only “gaffe” in Mr. Obama’s recent comment about small town America is simply that he let slip his real feelings.  The idea that ignorant people use “God, guns and gays” as a refuge from reality is a refrain often heard in the halls at Harvard, Princeton and other elite universities.  That he uttered such statements in a “closed door” fundraiser in San Francisco (when he thought those in small town America would not hear) says a lot about the man who professes to have a unique “ability to unite people around a politics of purpose.”

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Proponents of the immigration reform bill have been touting its benefits to the economy. We’re told that creating a “path to citizenship” will allow illegal aliens to come out of the “shadows”. That’s true, but whether that will produce the effects business hopes for is open to question.

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If there was ever a case of being careful what one wishes for, Nancy Pelosi’s most recent victory in the House is it.  The vote to provide funds for the war in Iraq on condition that the troops withdraw no later than August 2008, was described as a “triumph” by the Times of London.  Far from it. 

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When discussing another war some thirty years ago, John Kerry asked a very interesting question:  “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake? ”

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Have you noticed that everyone now seems to need a title?  It’s no longer enough to be just “Mr.” or “Mrs.” or “Miss.”  Title inflation is as rampant as grade inflation, and produces equally silly consequences. 

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In the years since the first Bush victory, we’ve been pummeled by allegations of widespread attempts by Republicans to manipulate the voting process.  In 2000, we were told that Florida’s governor Jeb Bush and his allies systematically attempted to suppress minority voting.  Ohio was the posterchild for similar allegations in 2004.

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Jon Carthew is the maker of a sausage in Wales called “Welsh Dragon Sausages.” The name makes sense because the sausages are spicy and the dragon is Wales’ national symbol.

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In the weeks leading up to the mid-term elections, Democrats repeatedly railed against the “culture of corruption” supposedly fostered by the Republican leadership. 

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A group of German and American do-gooders is urging German prosecutors to bring a war crimes indictment against Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and General Ricardo Sanchez.  The effort is being led by the Center for Constitutional Rights which accuses the Bush administration of engaging in torture.  Among those on whose behalf the claim is being made is Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called “20th hijacker.”

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Ahmed Chalabi says that the United States is “70% responsible” responsible for the chaos in Iraq.  I tend to think that 100% of the fault lies with Iraqis themselves.  After all, they’re the ones pulling the triggers.

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I used to be a strong supporter of the war in Iraq.  I confess, however, that I’ve been wavering for some time; but, this week Nouri al-Maliki convinced me that it may be time to get out.

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It seems axiomatic that when government is threatened, it creates more government.  So it was that shortly after the September 11 attacks, Congress — under pressure to DO SOMETHING !!!— created the Transportation Security Administration.  At the time, we were told that getting rid of the “miniumum wage” security guards then employed in most airports was essential to protecting the nation’s airways.  And, without much real discussion or debate, the Congress and President saddled the taxpayer with another bloated and inefficient federal bureaucracy.

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The Muslim world promptly rose up in righteous indignation, bombing a church in the Gaza strip, killing a nun in Somalia, and issuing various death threats against the pontiff.

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