Michelle Malkin passes along a press release: Presidential Candidate and California Congressman Duncan Hunter will be making a major announcement today at 2:00 p.m. (EST), regarding the future of his Presidential bid. All media are encouraged to attend or contact Bob Bevill, National Media Coordinator, to arrange alternate interviews. The natural speculation is that he’ll [...]

The CIA destroyed at least two tapes of its operatives using “severe interrogation techniques” to obtain information from suspected terrorists, Mark Mazetti reports for the NYT. Both the 9/11 Commission and attorneys for Zacarias Moussaoui had specifically requested any such evidence and Agency officials had previously denied, under oath, that any such tapes ever existed. [...]

Since no subject fascinates bloggers quite so much as bloggers, it’s no surprise that former White House communications director Dan Bartlett’s Texas Monthly comments on the subject have generated a blogstorm. In the critical exchange, highlighted by TPM’s David Kurtz, Bartlett reacts angrily to a question about a “myth that there’s an underground tunnel between [...]

The Watcher’s Council has announced its picks for the most outstanding posts of the preceding week. The winning Council post was Right Wing Nut House’s post, “Buchanan’s New Book: “Prepare Ye for the End””. Second place honors went to my own post, “The Visual Imagery Society”. I voted for Rick’s post so I’m happy with [...]

The blogosphere is abuzz over the revelation that Keith Kerr, the 74-year-old retired Army colonel and California National Guard general who stunned the candidates in last night’s YouTube debate with the announcement that he was openly gay, works for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. Jonathan Martin describes the question itself as “a powerful moment.” A retired [...]

John Murtha gets more pork for his district than any other Representative. If John Murtha were a businessman, he’d be the biggest employer in this town. The powerful U.S. congressman has used his clout on Capitol Hill to create thousands of jobs and steer billions of dollars in federal spending to help his hometown in [...]

Senator Barack Obama has stopped wearing an American flag pin on his lapel, saying that it had become “a substitute for true patriotism.” An eagle-eyed reporter for the ABC affiliate in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, noticed something missing from Democratic presidential contender Sen. Barack Obama’s, D-Ill., lapels. “You don’t have the American flag pin on. Is [...]

A University of Florida student was tasered for asking John Kerry a long question. U.S. Sen. John Kerry’s speech at the University of Florida came to a dramatic close Monday, shortly after a vocal audience member was hauled off by police and shot with a Taser gun. The audience member was preliminarily identified by UF [...]

Islamist websites are touting a new Osama bin Laden video — which would be the first in nearly three years — to commemorate the sixth anniversary of the 9-11 attacks. AP: Terror mastermind Osama bin Laden plans a new video to be released in the coming days ahead of the sixth anniversary of the Sept. [...]

Senator Larry Craig apparently likes to make creepy advances on strange men in airport bathrooms. Unfortunately for him, one of his random targets was a Minneapolis airport policeman. Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) was arrested in June at a Minnesota airport by a plainclothes police officer investigating lewd conduct complaints in a men’s public restroom, according [...]

Michael Demmons , Ace, Blackfive, Michelle Malkin, Richard at Hyscience and others reported yesterday on an APF photo that bore the caption, “An elderly Iraqi woman shows two bullets which she says hit her house following an early coalition forces raid in the predominantly Shiite Baghdad suburb of Sadr City. At least 175 people were [...]

Charges have been dropped against a Marine captain and lance corporal who had been accused of criminal wrongdoing in the killing of three brothers in a 2005 incident in Haditha. The Marine Corps has dropped all charges against a captain accused of failing to investigate the deaths of 24 civilians and another Marine accused in [...]

A seeming non-story posted in the Washington Times‘ blog is getting a surprising amount of attention in the blogosphere. A question for President Bush on immigration rose up like a ghost from the grave this afternoon in Ohio. Only the questioner was a 13-year old blonde-headed girl, Jessica Hackerd, from Brecksville, Ohio, who immediately broke [...]

John McCain has gotten rid of his top campaign staff in a dispute over the way they were handling his dwindling finances, Dan Balz reports. Campaign manager Terry Nelson and chief strategist John Weaver issued terse statements announcing their departures from the McCain camp, which reportedly came after the candidate erupted after concluding that his [...]

Fred Thompson may hire a large number of the campaign staffers fired by John McCain last week, reports Russell Berman speculates in the New York Sun. While there is no evidence of an outright pillaging of Mr. McCain’s departed aides, Republican sources in those states say Mr. Thompson’s emerging campaign is the likeliest landing spot. [...]

Susie Madrak, under the attention-grabbing headline “No More Dead Bloggers,” laments “the utter injustice of a Democratic political system that is very, very happy to take the money and volunteers the blogosphere sends its way” and yet returns only “Bubkis” to the non-A-listers. There is not even a little doubt in my mind that, if [...]

A front-page story in today’s WaPo puts the fundraising totals announced earlier this week into sharper focus: Campaign contributors to the 2008 presidential candidates heavily favored Democrats in the three-month period that ended Saturday, giving three dollars to the party’s leading contenders for every two dollars they gave to the top Republican candidates. Democratic Sen. [...]

The anti-immigration forces are angrier at President Bush over his support of providing a path to citizenship for 12 million illegal aliens than his mishandling of the Iraq War, intrusions on their civil liberties by the FBI and other bureaucracies, and various scandals over his appointees. While I think the outrage is misplaced for reasons [...]

That is the conclusion I’ve come too. Now, of course, this doesn’t apply to all conservatives, but it sure does apply to those who are anti-(illegal-)immigration. How do I conclude this? Well this article at Reason pretty much sums it up for me. The example in the article is pretty good. If there are no [...]

The use of online social networks like YouTube, Facebook, and MySpace has accelerated the pace of the 2008 presidential campaign. The Politico‘s Ben Smith warns that this comes at a price: the ability of network owners and others to censor political speech. He notes controversies over the removal of Michelle Malkin videos, the John McCain [...]

In a update to this post about Michelle Malkin and President Bush on Homeland Security, James made an interesting observation, It also occurs to me that, if “homeland security” is one’s chief concern, it would make sense to direct one’s limited resources to rounding up potential terrorists than migrant farmworkers. This seemed quite sensible to [...]

Robert Stacy McCain and several other editors and reporters from the Washington Times sat down with Michelle Malkin and Bryan Preston to talk about the state of the blogosphere and several hot topics. They’ve presented the transcript into three parts linked here. In Part 1, she contends that “every journalist now, in the context of [...]

I caught perhaps half an hour of last night’s so-called debate between Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, and eight other guys. I don’t feel deprived at not having seen the rest. The format was awful and the not unreasonable decision to include people whose candidacy has no shot (Tom Tancredo and Ron Paul, at a minimum) [...]

The dean of the Washington commentariat, David Broder, terms Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid “The Democrats’ Gonzales.” Here’s a Washington political riddle where you fill in the blanks: As Alberto Gonzales is to the Republicans, Blank Blank is to the Democrats — a continuing embarrassment thanks to his amateurish performance. If you answered ” Harry [...]

While James travels, I agreed to do some posting at OTB. The following is cross-posted from PoliBlog: Writes Michelle Malkin at RCP: Wanted: A Culture of Self-Defense There’s no polite way or time to say it: American colleges and universities have become coddle industries. Big Nanny administrators oversee speech codes, segregated dorms, politically correct academic [...]

Beccah Golubock Watson has a longish piece at the Nation highlighting the plight of lefty bloggers who are unable to sell advertising space for $10,000 a week and quit their day jobs. As bloggers become some of the progressive movement’s most effective voices, the left still has not figured out how to provide them with [...]

Tony Snow has been diagnosed with liver cancer. Presidential spokesman Tony Snow’s surgery to remove a small growth showed that his cancer has returned, the White House said Tuesday. Snow, 51, had his colon removed in 2005 and underwent six months of chemotherapy after being diagnosed with colon cancer. A small growth was discovered last [...]

Freelance writer and longtime blogger Cathy Seipp died yesterday after a 5-year-long bout with lung cancer. She was only 49. And, no, like a lot of people who die from lung cancer, she never smoked cigarettes. Her daughter, Maia, Susan Estrich, John O’Sullivan, Virginia Postrel, Matt Welch, Joanne Jacobs, Marc Danziger, Amy Alkon, Jim Treacher, [...]

Max Blumenthal passes on word “several gay blogs revealed late yesterday” that Marine Reserve Corporal Matt Sanchez, winner of the Jeanne Kirpatrick Academic Freedom Award at this year’s CPAC, “was known during his halcyon days as Rod Majors, a majorly well-endowed gay porn star.” In his spare time, he was “a $200-an-hour male prostitute who [...]

Ann Coulter just finished her stand-up routine. I missed the first part of it, so I’m not sure what the dumbest thing she said was. She needs to update her material, though, since she’s making Phil Donohue jokes. Hint: No one under 40 has any clue who he is. (The joke, in the form of [...]

Newt Gingrich visited Bloggers Row this morning. Unfortunately, I had another commitment and missed him. Michelle Malkin has a photo and quick synopsis of the visit.

Michelle Malkin has joined us on Blogger’s Row. Her fan base is now stopping by for photo ops. Her Hot Air colleague Bryan Preston is with her but is drawing no more fanboy interest than the rest of us.

Amanda Marcotte has resigned as John Edwards’ blogger, on the basis that she was creating a distraction for the campaign. Rather than stop there, though, she plays the victim. Unfortunately, Bill Donohue and his calvacade of right wing shills don’t respect that a mere woman like me could be hired for my skills… What in [...]

UPDATE: 23 AUG 08 – Irony of ironies: Obama Taps Joe Biden for VP – Storybook, Man Joe Biden is set to launch his second run for the presidency today but it will likely be overshadowed by some candid comments made in an interview with Jason Horowitz of the New York Observer. Most noteworthy is [...]

There’s some buzz on both sides of the blogosphere over a number of press stories on the Iran-Iraq nexus. In the NYT, James Glanz and Mark Mazetti report that, “Investigators say they believe that attackers who used American-style uniforms and weapons to infiltrate a secure compound and kill five American soldiers in Karbala on Jan. [...]

The Please DO NOT Feed the Jinger Bears Edition OTB Caption ContestTM is now over.

Gerald R. Ford, 38th president of the United States, passed away Tuesday at the age of 93. Gerald R. Ford, who picked up the pieces of Richard Nixon’s scandal-shattered White House as the 38th and only unelected president in America’s history, has died, his wife, Betty, said Tuesday. He was 93. Ford had battled pneumonia [...]

Blue Texan, guesting at Glenn Greenwald’s Unclaimed Territory, notes a strange silence on certain conservative blogs about the Haditha massacre trial: Yesterday, the Haditha tragedy was again in the news, as 8 Marines face now criminal charges in the deaths of 24 Iraqi civilians — including women and children — killed in the Iraqi town [...]

Michelle Malkin has joined with Eason Jordan and a merry cast of extras in a search to find Jamil Hussein. I’m not sure whether this will more resemble O.J.’s search for the real killer or the Monty Python troupe’s quest for the Holy Grail.

Chris Bowers, Andrew Sullivan, and Ann Althouse muse on the impact blogging is having on their lives. Steve Bainbridge‘s quoting of Jack Germond notwithstanding, it’s an interesting set of discussions of the life of a semi-public intellectual. Their circumstances are different, though. Sullivan is the outlier since he was already a well-known writer, editor, and [...]

Nancy Pelosi has told Alcee Hastings that he will not be chair of the House Intelligence Committee in the new Congress and he has dropped his bid for the office. Democratic Rep. Alcee Hastings of Florida, impeached as a federal judge in 1989 on corruption charges, dropped his bid under pressure on Tuesday to chair [...]

The Washington Times has an extensive report on the incident last week where imams returning from a conference in Minneapolis were removed from a US Airways flight and subsequently banned from the airline. It is entitled “How the imams terrorized an airliner.” Muslim religious leaders removed from a Minneapolis flight last week exhibited behavior associated [...]

MSNBC runs the headline, “California court says bloggers can’t be sued.” Their quick summary: The California Supreme Court ruled Monday that bloggers and participants in Internet bulletin board groups cannot be sued for posting defamatory statements made by others. In deciding a case closely watched by free speech groups, the court said a federal law [...]

There was a huge blogospheric reaction overnight to a student being tasered by UCLA police after he failed to produce an ID card at the Powell library. The report: An incident late Tuesday night in which a UCLA student was stunned at least four times with a Taser has left the UCLA community questioning whether [...]

Writes Michelle Malkin: The Democrats want John Bolton’s scalp. This is a moment for conservatives to stand up to the Left’s empty, vindictive obstructionism and support a strong voice for America’s interests at the corrupted, soft-on-jihad offices of Turtle Bay. Or, maybe it’s time to recognize the following: 1) The Democrats won the elections, and [...]

Absent some dramatic turnaround in the numbers in Virginia or Montana, which I don’t expect, the Republicans will lose the Senate. They have already lost the House; the only question is by how many seats. The Senate results are precisely as I predicted Sunday, although I had revised my prediction in the CNN bloggers pool [...]

There was much hoopla overnight, created by a Drudge hyping of a NYT “November surprise” on Iraq’s WMD that, frankly, strikes me as a non-story. Here’s the gist: Last March, the federal government set up a Web site to make public a vast archive of Iraqi documents captured during the war. The Bush administration did [...]

The ESPN headline “Malkin first in 89 years to score in first 6 NHL games” had me momentarily confused, wondering when Michelle Malkin found the time to play hockey. It turns out to be some guy from Pittsburgh I’ve never heard of.

Senator George Allen has issued a press release detailing lurid, strange, and otherwise lame scenes from the novels of his Democratic opponent, former Navy Secretary James Webb. WEBB’S WEIRD WORLD The Author’s Disturbing Writings Show a Continued Pattern of Demeaning Women · Some of Webb’s writings are very disturbing for a candidate hoping to represent [...]

Michelle Malkin, ever on the look out for Dhimmitude (well except when she’s on the lookout for people trying to sneak the entire southwest U.S. across the Mexican border), thinks she has spotted some in the following comments by President Bush, “Islam is a religion that brings hope and comfort to more than a billion [...]