Among all the people who are now scrambling to get on the Obama bandwagon, none is likely to impress more people than Colin Powell —...

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More recently, Powell sat silent while two lives were ruined in a special prosecutor's zeal to get a conviction in a case involving a noncrime: telling columnist Robert Novak that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA.

The full story is told in Novak's book, "The Prince of Darkness." What is relevant here is that a New York Times reporter went to jail for refusing to tell who had revealed Ms. Plame's occupation to her, and White House aide Scooter Libby was convicted of perjury because his memory of what he said did not match the memories of some reporters — whose memories did not match each other's.

The idea that the United States must somehow rehabilitate itself in the eyes of the United Nations or NATO or "world opinion" is staggering, even though it is an idea very popular in the mainstream media.

The first duty of a president is to protect American interests — of which survival is No. 1 — regardless of what others may say.

Despite the media hype that we need to rehabilitate ourselves in the eyes of the world, the United States of America remains the number one destination of immigrants from around the world, some of whom take desperate chances with their lives to get here, whether across the waters of the Caribbean or by crossing our dangerous southwest desert.

The American nuclear umbrella has enabled Western European nations to escape responsibility for their own military survival for more than half a century.

Lack of responsibility has bred irresponsibility, one sign of which are unionized troops in NATO and NATO bomber pilots who have office hours when they will and will not fly, not to mention NATO troops letting American troops handle the really dangerous fighting in Afghanistan.

Maybe the time is overdue for NATO to try to rehabilitate itself and for Americans to stop trying to be "citizens of the world."

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When our economic bus is teetering at the edge of a cliff, it's a bad time to throw on some extra weight.

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Get to know the term "single payer." You may hear a lot of it if Barack Obama wins the presidency and his party gains unstoppable majorities in the House and Senate. It's not on the candidate's or party's lips at this point, but it's in their hearts and minds.

"Single payer" means socialized health insurance. There's one payer for all doctors, hospitals and other providers, and it's the government. With variations, this is how things are done in Canada and much of Europe. In the U.S., a single-payer system (Medicare) serves the over-65 set. Obama's health plan is not a single-payer plan, at least at the start. But give it time and it will get us there.

Obama's plan looks less radical at first glance. It would expand workplace coverage with carrots and sticks for employers — the large would have to provide insurance or pay a penalty, the small would get a tax break to buy coverage.

Outside the employer system, he would set up a market of private plans, with one public plan in the mix, and would help at least some families pay for their policies.

But this is not merely a more subsidized version of the status quo. It's a blueprint for socialization in stages, with private insurers ultimately forced out of the health business.

Toward that end, his new public insurance plan would serve as a Trojan horse. It would be first-among-equals in Obama's proposed National Health Insurance Exchange, the regulated market for insurance plans.

It would offer comprehensive coverage (including preventive, maternity and mental health care) with taxpayer backing. Private insurers in the Exchange would have to offer coverage at least as broad as that of the public plan, but without the public subsidy.

You can see where this leads. Before long, the insurance "market" would be a single-payer show. The same dynamic would eventually push private players out of the employer-paid market as well, because the tax-subsidized plan will have the same advantage. Employers will choose it because it will cost them less.

We know this is what many Americans think they want, but there are costs they need to consider before they vote. Socialized health coverage would leave them dependent on one monopoly insurer. If Medicare's continued slide toward insolvency is any guide, it would lead to out-of-control costs and big tax hikes down the road. It also would choke off the incentives that make American health care, for all its faults, the world's leading force for medical innovation.

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But news-hungry consumers don't find it lovable when the media elite keep important stories to themselves. John McCain has demanded that the L.A. Times release its videotape of a 2003 farewell party in Chicago at which Obama is said to have grandly toasted guest of honor Rashid Khalidi, the late PLO head Yasser Arafat's spokesman. (Ex-terrorist Bill Ayers may have been there too.)

But the Times apparently doesn't think Americans are entitled to see Obama praising a terrorist mouthpiece before they decide whether to make him president for four years. Similarly, major news outlets buried this week's story of Obama calling for "major redistributive change" in a newly discovered 2001 radio interview.

We have already seen that Obama's forces have no scruples about punishing media organizations who do not act as disciples of "The One." Newswomen with both WFTV in Orlando, Fla., and the CBS affiliate in Philadelphia dared to ask running mate Joseph Biden about Obama's plans to "spread the wealth," as he infamously told Ohio's Joe the Plumber. The Obama campaign let the journalists know they were now personae non grata.

With both the executive and legislative branches firmly in the power of the most liberal leadership ever — Obama, Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid — it is naive to think they would not move against those who most threaten their prospects in the midterm elections of 2010. And that is Fox News and conservative talk radio, supported by the blogosphere.

The establishment media and liberal Democrats constitute an axis of bias, arming to threaten the free speech of Americans. George Orwell, call your office.

Pelosi: You know what would make Congress more bipartisan? Giving us total control

"Elect us, hold us accountable, and make a judgment and then go from there. But I do tell you that if the Democrats win, and have substantial majorities, Congress of the United States will be more bipartisan," said Pelosi.

They were elected and held accountable with lower ratings then the President.

With larger majorities in the House and Senate, how can/and why do you need it to be "more bipartisan."  Bipartisan just like you stalled Bush's choices for judges.

More than seven years ago, Heather Mac Donald wrote “The Myth of Racial Profiling” for the Manhattan Institute’s quarterly, City Journal. “The anti-profiling crusade,” Mac Donald wrote, “thrives on an ignorance of policing and a willful blindness to the demographics of crime.” This ignorance persists, and last week saw the arrival of yet another shining example of it. But, unlike the bleating from such charlatans as Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, this latest bit of ignorance comes cloaked in the legitimizing finery of Ivy League science.

Damning stuff, says the ACLU, which commissioned the study. In an accompanying letter to the Los Angeles police commission, ACLU staff attorney Peter Bibring writes that “Prof. Ayres’s report ends debate about the existence of the problem and validates the experience in communities of color of police interactions attributable to ‘driving while black’ or ‘driving while brown.’”

Rubbish.

First of all, to claim that a study commissioned by an interest group, especially one as driven by ideology as the ACLU, is so irrefutably grounded in fact as to end debate on the matter is the very height of arrogance. Furthermore, the Ayres report has been neither peer-reviewed nor published in any scientific journal. That the report’s conclusions reflect the beliefs of the organization that paid for it should come as a surprise to no one. Indeed, the ACLU may have selected Mr. Ayres on the basis of his keen ability to detect racial bias nearly everywhere he looks. He has previously published books and articles on the hidden racial components involved in setting bail, purchasing automobiles, and tipping taxicab drivers.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa was once president of the L.A. chapter of the ACLU, and the rest of the city government is composed almost entirely of like-minded liberals. They are far too committed to politically correct ideals to disclose the cold and persistent facts that LAPD cops, indeed cops all over the country, know all too well: that the murder statistics cited above are also reflected in every other category of violent crime. Far from being over, the debate over racial profiling will continue for as long as these racial disparities in crime rates do.