Politics Blog

Two good (though biased, of course) articles today in the Washington Post and the NY Times on one of the less publicized items in the Republican agenda - reforming the legal system to the detriment of trial lawyers.

GOP lawmakers have been quietly inserting lawsuit limitation clauses in various bills, but next year they plan a push for tort reform under the guise of making health care cheaper. The key provision will be limiting damages for “pain and suffering” to $250,000 in medical malpractice suits.

These reforms can’t come too soon. They’re good for business, good for consumers (since they lower prices) and bad for trial lawyers and the main beneficiaries of their campaign contributions - Democrats. Best of all, Hollywood will have to stop making movies glorifying ambulance chasers who win multi-million dollar settlements for their poor clients from evil Big Corporations.

Quite enough has been said about the claim this morning that the first human clone was born. I’ll only add that this is like a bad sci-fi plot: A weird religious cult, calledthe Raelians, worships aliens and clones a human baby, holding a big press conference by a bimboish scientist to announce its success on national TV.

Strong winds here in western Washington state knocked out power to several hundred thousand homes for several hours. It’s striking how dependent we are on electricity. Nothing - the phone, the stove, the computer, the radio, the telephone - worked. Traffic ground to a halt as signals went offline. The only thing to do was to take a nap.

Here’s a link to actual audio of Patty Murray talking about Bin Laden.

There’s a sentence that has been left out of most newspaper quotes, since The Columbian, the newspaper that broke the story, left it out of its original article. Here’s the full quote with the missing sentence:

Osama bin Laden has been very, very effective. We’ve got to ask, why is this man so popular around the world? Why are people so supportive of him in many countries?

He has been in many countries that are riddled with poverty. People don’t have phones, no sewers, no roads, no schools, no health care, no facilities just to make sure their daily lives are OK. He’s been out in these countries for decades building roads, building schools, building infrastructure, building day care facilities, building health care facilities, and the people are extremely grateful. It made their lives better. We have not done that. We haven’t been out in any of these countries helping them build their infrastructure.

In other words, Murray’s comments are even dumber than they seem at first glance. Murray is under the impression that the US hasn’t given foreign aid to “any of these countries.” A cursory search reveals that the US gave $170 million to Afghanistan in 2001, before 9/11.

Now the Taliban are using Senator Patty Murray’s comments to boost their cause.

Do you think Senator Patty Murray should apologize for praising Bin Laden? Vote here and let her know.

Newspapers are full of reports of illegal immigrants from various Arab countries who’ve been swept up in a net after all citizens of those countries were asked to register their address with the INS.

As a foreign-born legal immigrant, I’ve dealt with the INS for years. It is a sclerotic bureacracy that treats legal immigrants like dirt and lets illegals pour into the country.

Legal immigrants loathe the INS. The bureaucracy usually takes years to “process” routine applications that sit on dusty shelves. After years have passed, these applications are reviewed for just a few minutes by an immigration officer and usually approved. For this, the INS charges hundreds of dollars in fees. Why not use at least use these fees to enforce US sovereignty at its borders?

In addition to its already considerable problems, the INS is swamped by stupid legislation from congress. For example, there is the ridiculous “diversity visa” program. This brainchild of Ted Kennedy hands out 50,000 green cards to immigrants from various “under-represented countries” every year. “Under-represented countries” means every third world hell-hole whose inhabitants have not yet figured out how to send people here in the proportions that Europe, Mexico, China and India have done. The Egyptian shooter who shot up LAX airport on Independence Day was the beneficiary of one such “diversity visa.” Most such visas go to people from Africa and the middle east - prime terrorist recruiting ground. Then there are the hair-brained “amnesty” schemes which result in hundreds of thousands of green cards being issued every year to illegal immigrants - most from Mexico, thousands from the middle east.

I don’t trust the INS. It’s so far gone that I think we should tear the whole darn thing down, replace it with a new agency built from scratch and completely overhaul our immigration laws.

In the meantime, though, how do we keep out the terrorists? We can’t keep subjecting people to various indignities and watch liberals howl about it. I have a simple, completely effective solution that I’ve proposed before: Deny visas to citizens of certain countries. You can read more about my proposal here.

I don’t know how Scott Ott does it, but he keeps hitting home runs at scrappleface.com

The New York Times has a surprisingly glowing profile of Bill Frist, the man.

The Washington Post is the latest liberal paper to come out with an editorial supporting Patty Murray. The paper recognizes that Murray’s comments were “inept,” but says:

Either way, this is a point worth debating, and no one should be called “unpatriotic” for bringing it up.

There’s a huge problem here. No one has called Murray “unpatriotic.” Look it up on Google News.

The Post is concocting an argument that conservatives never made. We don’t contend that Murray is “unpatriotic.” We contend she’s dangerous because she’s mind-bogglingly stupid and misguided. She does not deserve to be one of only 100 people who are privileged to cast a vote in the US Senate.

I’m not a christian, but Merry Christmas to all who are celebrating! It’s a good thing you don’t live in Saudi Arabia:

As evincedby the atmosphere in this Riyadh gift shop, Christmas is mostly hidden in this desert kingdom, where Islam is the only accepted religion.

Expatriate workers hold discreet holiday parties within walled compounds, out of sight of the government’s religious police, who guard against offenses to the faith. For many other foreigners, the anniversary of Christ’s birth is a private day of reflection.

“I only pray in my room,” said a Roman Catholic laborer from Sri Lanka, noting there is little else to do to celebrate Christmas.

Some embassies, he said, organize gatherings for their citizens during the holiday season, but generally not on Christmas Day to avoid offending Saudi sensibilities.