Unfortunately for us, we caught most of Steve Colbert’s mostly unfunny routine at last night’s White House Correspondents Dinner, and missed the president’s reportedly much funnier routine.

We were interested to see we weren’t the only ones to find Colbert’s efforts to be tedious. He did have a few good lines, but overall it was just not good.

Fortunately for us, we were able to watch the president’s highlights at Hot Air.

Once again, the president shows himself to be gracious, good-natured, and genuine. No wonder those on the left hate him so much.

On today’s Meet the Press, there were some classic moments. First, host Tim Russert flunks Econ 101, asking Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman:

“Oil demand is up. Supply is down. So why are prices rising?”

“…if demand is up but supply is down, why are the profits so high?”

[quote corrected according to transcript -- Editors]

Uh, Tim, Google “The law of supply and demand.”

Then, Senator Dick Durbin (D. – Of Course) asked, “Am I the only one of your guests here that think that profit taking is a problem?”, an attitude that would be much more at home in the old Soviet Union or in Cuba than in the United States. To once again state the obvious, in our economic system, companies exist for the purpose of making profits. Durbin is essentially espousing Marxist economics. It’s not surprising that he thinks that way, just that he said it so openly.

Former Congressman Tim Roemer (D.-IN) was given space in the DNC press outlet The New York Times to lay out the case for electing Democrats to the House and Senate in November.

What did he come up with? Nothing but an empty slogan, and not an original one, at that. (The slogan, incidentally, is “Had Enough?” – ripped off from the 1946 Republican campaign.) But will a slogan with nothing to back it up be enough for the Democrats to squeak out a victory in November? Perhaps. We put no value on the words of those Republicans who insist everything will work out in November in spite of their dismal poll numbers. We make no predictions, let’s just say we won’t be surprised if the Democrats do well. (We also won’t be surprised to see the Republicans hold on by the skin of their teeth. But those currently offering their assurances are offering nothing.)

But other than the cute slogan, what are the Democrats offering?

“The administration said Iraqis would greet us with roses as liberators, yet our soldiers are attacked with homemade bombs and rocket-propelled grenades. Had Enough? Vote Democratic.

Most of the Iraqis do support the liberation of their country from the brutal dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, and many did in fact greet American troops with flowers and cheers. That a minority is fighting to restore the dictatorship doesn’t disprove that. If the Democrats want to argue that the insurgents are representative of the majority view in Iraq, let them. And let the Republicans remind voters that partisan cheap shots about years-old predictions are no substitute for the Democrats’ complete lack of a current strategy for victory. Want more talk of defeat and retreat? Vote Democratic.

“The administration said it was prepared for a hurricane in New Orleans, yet our government’s feeble response prompted Bangladesh to offer us $1 million in aid. Had Enough? Vote Democratic!

The people responsible for the first response in New Orleans were all Democrats, including the mayor and the governor of Louisiana. We went through all that at the time, and don’t wish to rehash it here. More important, the government policies that made New Orleans such a basket case years before hurricane Katrina hit were all designed and implemented by Democrats. Want more race-baiting and decades of inner city decay? Vote Democratic.

“The administration said it would bring competency to our federal budget, yet our nation faces catastrophic deficits. Had Enough? Vote Democratic!”

The Democrats wail and moan at the suggestion of any cuts to any federal program, and they want to tax more and spend more. The Republicans certainly need to get back to fiscal responsibility, but the Democrats have offered no plans to get there. (Don’t try to tell us the Democrats balanced the budget in the 1990s. The Republicans in congress balanced the budget in the 1990s.) Want higher taxes and a much higher level of federal spending and regulation? Vote Democratic.

Want higher gas prices? Vote Democratic.

And the entire article goes on like that, repeating the slogan, and offering no plans to do anything. If the Republicans can get their act together just a little bit, and offer even a little something to counter this nothing from the Democrats, just maybe they will squeak by in November.

As distasteful as the Republican pandering of the last few days on gas prices has been, nothing compares to the utter hypocrisy and cynicism of the Democrats on the issue. Now (via The Corner) the GOP has put out a helpful summary of Democrats’ efforts over the last decade to make gasoline more expensive and less available. Check it out here.

Previous:
Say It With Me: Supply and Demand

President Bush made a strong, unequivocal statement in support of English as the language of America today, and he should be applauded for doing so. He could have chosen instead to respond with some sort of multicultural blather, but he did not; he defended American identity, specifically the central role of English in our culture:

A Spanish language version of the national anthem was released Friday by a British music producer, Adam Kidron, who said he wanted to honor America’s immigrants.

When the president was asked at a Rose Garden question-and-answer session whether the anthem should be sung in Spanish, he replied: “I think the national anthem ought to be sung in English, and I think people who want to be a citizen of this country ought to learn English and they ought to learn to sing the national anthem in English.”

We, like the president, speak both Spanish and English. This is not about being anti-Spanish. It’s about defending American culture, and being proud of it, not apologizing for it.

Others:
Michelle Malkin
Washington Post

Charles Krauthammer nails it today in his latest Washington Post column (via Real Clear Politics), about the blatant pandering from Congress and the White House in response to rising gasoline prices:

Say It With Me: Supply and Demand

If you thought the Dubai port deal marked a record high in Washington cynicism, think again. Nothing can match the spectacle of politicians scrambling for cover during a spike in gasoline prices. And this time, the panderfest has gone all the way to the Oval Office. President Bush has joined the braying congressional hordes by ordering the Energy and Justice Departments and the FTC to launch an investigation into possible gasoline price-fixing.

What a disgrace.

It really is a disgrace, seeing American politicians so eager to run away from the free market system at the first sign of a price for a product that’s “too high.” Even more insulting is this crazy idea of sending every American a hundred bucks to ease the pain of paying $3 for a gallon of gas. That idea amounts to nothing more than vote buying. And they’re trying to buy us off with our own money, no less.

Businesses – yes, even Big Oil companies – even the company you work for perhaps, exist to make money. Profit is not a dirty word in America, or at least it didn’t used to be. It isn’t the job of Congress to decide how much profit is “too much.” Of course the Democrats, many of whom are in their hearts socialists, can’t be expected to respect the basic laws of economics, or the free market. But for the Republicans in Congress, there’s just no excuse.

Of course, much of the blame has to be put on the public, who seem ready and willing to quickly abandon free market principles as soon as things don’t go exactly their way. It’s really hard to imagine mere politicians respecting a principle when voters won’t.

The appointment of Tony Snow to be the new White House Press Secretary seems to be a really good move on the part of the president. We were very pleased to hear he had accepted the job. One of the biggest problems, perhaps the biggest problem, for the Bush administration has been with their communication efforts, moreso than the merits of their policies. This is especially true when it comes to the war on terror, and more specifically the Iraq campaign. Mr. Snow will be coming from behind in the effort to counter all the deceptive MSM/Democratic party spin about the Iraq conflict that’s been put out in the last few years, but if anyone is up to the task, he is.

We were pretty surprised to learn that Snow would want the job, actually. Facing a big pay cut and a hostile press corps every day seems to be a step down from where he was working in print, radio, and television media. It’s obviously more a call to duty for him than a career move.

The case that this was a good move was further bolstered as Snow made his statement this morning after the announcement:

I’m delighted to be here. One of the things I want to do is just make it clear that one of the reason I took the job is not only because I believe in the president, because, believe it or not, I want to work with you. These are times that are going to be very challenging. We’ve got a lot of big issues ahead and we’ve got a lot of important things that all of us are going to be covering together. And I am very excited and I can’t wait.

And I want to thank you, Mr. President, for the honor.

Just in terms of tone, demeanor and speaking ability, this appointment already looks like a big step up from Snow’s predecessor, who often seemed ill-at-ease and outmatched by the often hostile press corps. All in all a good day for the White House.

Others:
Outside the Beltway
Hot Air
Memeorandum

These two paragraphs from today’s Washington Post tell us everything we need to know about the Democrats’ “energy policy” ideas:

Oil analysts concur that the primary causes of the escalating prices cannot be mitigated by federal intervention. They include the rapidly rising demand for oil in China and India, instability in oil-rich Nigeria, financial speculation about a possible military confrontation with Iran, and U.S. refining capacity’s failure to keep up with demand. Refineries had to work overtime last year to make up for the oil shortage that Hurricane Katrina wrought, and only now have they been able to undertake necessary maintenance.

Still, Democrats are hammering Bush and his Republican colleagues for failing to come up with a strategy that would cut prices soon. They hope to harness voter anger over the trend and, by Election Day, turn it against the Republicans who control Congress.

In other words, once again the Democrats have no ideas, other than the same old one – to hammer away with empty slogans and demagogue an issue purely for partisan point-scoring.

And newsflash for the Republicans, who aren’t doing much better on the issue – the free market doesn’t only apply when gasoline is cheap. There is no inherent Constitutional right to gas at two bucks a gallon. It is not the job of the government to set commodity prices in a free society.

It’s fine to do an investigation into possible anti-trust violations if there’s evidence that such violations may have occured. But so far we haven’t seen any evidence to that effect presented. We’ve only heard people complaining that gas prices are too high and that the feds should step in and “fix it.”

We hate paying more for gas as much as the next guy, but we aren’t about to abandon the free market and embrace socialism over it.

The Republicans should be talking less about increased regulation and higher taxes, and more about increasing domestic oil production. Again, bring back the ANWR bill.

Others:
Michelle Malkin
Memeorandum

So they apparently caught the CIA employee who leaked to the Washington Post about the alleged “secret prisons” in Europe. From the NY Times:

C.I.A. Fires Senior Officer Over Leaks

The Central Intelligence Agency has dismissed a senior career officer for disclosing classified information to reporters, including material for Pulitzer Prize-winning articles in The Washington Post about the agency’s secret overseas prisons for terror suspects, intelligence officials said Friday.

The C.I.A. would not identify the officer, but several government officials said it was Mary O. McCarthy, a veteran intelligence analyst who until 2001 was senior director for intelligence programs at the National Security Council, where she served under President Bill Clinton and into the Bush administration.

All we want to know is, will they now go after the leaker(s) of McCarthy’s name? Where will it end? Will the lefties blame the president, Karl Rove or Dick Cheney? Will they call those who “outed” McCarthy “leakers” or “whistleblowers”?

In an interesting twist, these secret detention facilities may not exist at all. Will Dana Priest have to return her Pulitzer?

Others:
Here’s an extensive roundup from Michelle Malkin
Memeorandum

Here we go again, same story, different day – another former CIA official is going to appear on 60 Minutes and tell us the Administration ignored the intel about Iraq. Yawn.

A Spy Speaks Out

A CIA official who had a top role during the run-up to the Iraqi war charges the White House with ignoring intelligence that said there were no weapons of mass destruction or an active nuclear program in Iraq.

The former highest ranking CIA officer in Europe, Tyler Drumheller, also says that while the intelligence community did give the White House some bad intelligence, it also gave the White House good intelligence “” which the administration chose to ignore.

Same story, still just as bogus. Of course we now know, with the benefit of hindsight, which intel was right and which was wrong. That doesn’t mean the president ignored the intel that turned out to be right.

Intel gathering is always an imperfect exercise. There’s always going to be conflicting data and different analyses of that data. Given that, the reasonable response, the only reasonable response, was to assume the worst about Saddam Hussein, not the best. The valid assumption, given that some intel said he had more of a WMD program than other intel information, was to assume that he did. Let us never forget how wrong the CIA was about Iraq’s nuclear program before the 1991 Gulf War.

It’s Mr. Drumheller and his ilk who are now cherry-picking the intel after the fact. Same with all the Bush-bashing Democrats who are now pointing to this or that piece of information gleaned after the invasion of Iraq and saying that we should have known all along, Bush ignored the evidence, it was a fraud made up in Texas, etc.

The bottom line remains that the consensus view in the U.S government and among a number of foreign intelligence agencies was that Saddam was a threat, that he had or was pursuing WMD including nuclear weapons, and that he was a state sponsor of terrorism. After 9/11, and after the Director of the CIA told the president the case against Saddam was “a slam dunk,” the president was obligated to act. He would have been negligent not to.

From the NY Times:

Democrats Eager to Exploit Anger Over Gas Prices

WASHINGTON, April 20 “” Democrats running for Congress are moving quickly to use the most recent surge in oil and gasoline prices to bash Republicans over energy policy, and more broadly, the direction of the country.

With oil prices hitting a high this week and prices at the pump topping $3 a gallon in many places, Amy Klobuchar, a Democratic Senate candidate in Minnesota, is making the issue the centerpiece of her campaign. Ms. Klobuchar says it “is one of the first things people bring up” at her campaign stops.

To varying degrees, Democrats around the country are following a similar script that touches on economic anxiety and populist resentment against oil companies.

So let’s get this straight – the same people who have spent the last several years doing everything they could to hamper increased domestic oil production are now going to use the issue against the people who have tried to increase domestic production?

And aren’t these the same people who used to advocate things like increasing the gas tax, carbon taxes, the Kyoto Protocol, etc., to try to dissuade people from using more energy?

The cynicism and pure nerve of the Democrats is unfathomable.

The Republicans should bring up the bill approving drilling in ANWR several times between now and November.

Note that the Democrats aren’t offering any proposals that will actually lower energy costs, it’s all just another of their usual substance-free emotional appeals. We’ll soon find out if offering nothing more than knee-jerk opposition to everything the Republicans try to do will be a winner for the Democrats in November. Given the pitiful shape the Republicans are in these days, it just might be.

More:
The Washington Post

From LiveScience (via Yahoo News):

Men and women are actually from the same planet, but scientists now have the first strong evidence that the emotional wiring of the sexes is fundamentally different.

Really? The first strong evidence? Aren’t any of these guys married?

But seriously, while this study is interesting in the details it offers, it’s always fascinating when some academic study that merely helps confirm the obvious is touted as if it’s a great surprise or breakthrough. Some people seem unwilling to believe anything if it’s not the subject of an academic study.