Editorial Page Editor Mark Tapscott was voted Conservative Journalist of the Year for 2008 by the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), and he was inducted into the Freedom of Information Act Hall of Fame in 2006. Before joining the Examiner in 2006, he was director of The Heritage Foundation's Center for Media and Public Policy and founded its Database 101 Computer-Assisted Research and Reporting Boot Camps at the National Press Club. He's a former assistant managing editor and managing editor for two other Washington region daily newspapers. He is also proprietor of Tapscott's Copy Desk blog.
President Obama says there's not much the federal government can do to bring down gas prices any time soon. Michael Bromwich, Obama's chief bureaucrat in charge of issuing permits for oil and gas companies to drill off-shore, said the same thing today:
“‘Even if we permitted the hell out of everything tomorrow -- every pending permit, some permits that haven't even been filed yet -- it would not have a material effect on gas prices. That's the simple, clear reality,” said the director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE).
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What if House Speaker John Boehner made this announcement:“The House will remain in session until further notice. Members are requested to forego all recesses and weekday travel to and from their districts until a 2012 federal budget is signed into law with a comprehensive plan to balance expenditures and revenue, reform safety-net entitlement programs, set a schedule to eliminate the national debt and insure the military security of the United States.”
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Almost certainly not, to answer the question posed by the headline above. Here's the latest example of why.
Think Progress is all atwitter about a Nation magazine report concerning the Koch Industries 2010 Election Packet. This dastardly document, according to Think Progress, was "mailed to 50,000 employees instructing them on who to vote for in the 2010 midterm elections."
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I usually avoid wasting time talking about political propagandists masquerading as serious public policy analysts. That's why readers of this space and my frequent columns in this newspaper never see the words "Paul Krugman" included in a sentence addressing a coherent argument from either the Right or Left.
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Willam A. Rusher, former National Review publisher, nationally syndicated columnist, and friend, counselor and mentor to countless leaders and aspiring leaders of the conservative movement, passed away Saturday in San Francisco after a long illness.
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America and the world are running out of oil, right? That's what the Peak Oil voices have been telling us for three decades? So why are there more known producable oil reserves today than 30 years ago?
Chevron CEO John Watson knows the answer, and explains it in detail in an interview with The Wall Street Journal's Kim Strassel:
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Here's the analysis of the Continuing Resolution deal by the Republican Study Committee, which is the largest House caucus and represents the mainstream conservative voice of the GOP:
Spending Levels: The total non-emergency spending level for H.R. 1473 is $1.05 trillion. The bill leads to $421.9 billion (compared to $378 billion in FY 2008) for non-security spending and $627.9 billion for security spending (compared to $554 billion in FY 2008).
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House Speaker John Boehner is gathering his troops at 11:30 this morning for a closed-door meeting to discuss the Continuing Resolution deal with President Obama and congressional Democrats that appears to be in some jeopardy as a result of questions about whether it actually reduces federal spending.
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Kansas Republican Rep. Tim Huekskamp will vote against the Obama-Boehner Continuing Resolution deal on 2011 spending. In a lengthy statement released late yesterday, Huelskamp, who also voted against the previous CR, explained why he will again go against the House GOP leadership:
“The traditional laws of addition and subtraction must not apply in Washington. A deeper calculation of this spending ‘deal’ using figures available from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reveals that this actually only saves $352 million in direct spending," Huelskamp said.
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There's this President Obama:
"We have to live within our means." --- Today at George Washington University
Then there's this President Obama on Feb. 12, 2011, when he unveiled his 2012 budget proposal, which included this table on his projection of the national debt, based upon spending as he proposed:
Table S-14. Federal Government Financing And Debt; Total, Gross Federal Debt
Actual 2010: 13,529 [Billion Dollars]
2011 Estimate: 15,476 [Billion Dollars]
2012 Estimate: 16,654 [Billion Dollars]
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Center for Public Integrity investigators completed a rigorous assessment of the visitor logs made public by the Obama White House and concluded - can you believe it? - that the logs were being managed first and foremost to protect the First Family.
In a kind of good news/bad news summary of its findings, the center said:
* Obama White House is the first to ever release visitor logs but the records are riddled with weaknesses.
* Of 50,000 visitors logged in to see President Obama, most were attending 600-plus social events that drew hundreds or thousands of people.
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Wisconsin freshman Sen. Ron Johnson, a conservative Tea Party favorite, announced this morning that he will vote against Friday's deal between House Speaker John Boehner and President Obama and congressional Democrats on a continuing resolutiuon to complete fiscal year 2011.
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Say what you will about the rest of the Friday budget deal negotiated by House Speaker John Boehner with President Obama and congressional Democrats, but Rep. Rob Bishop, R-UT, sees one very bright silver lining in it - It puts a road block in the way of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's attempt to create new environmental law via regulatory fiat.
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What does an intrepid reporter do when the lights go out in the nation's capitol just as he is delivering a vital news report to the country? Watch this latest episode of Politizoid to find out. And don't miss the end where we learn just what Vice President Joe Biden really does.
Lights Out from RightChange on Vimeo.
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Examiner Sunday Reflection contributor and Instapundit founder Glenn Harlan Reynolds has a great piece up tonight on The Wall Street Journal's web site making the case for allowing 18-year-olds to drink legally.
The argument is simple and familiar:
"Eighteen-year-olds in America are old enough to do pretty much everything except drink. Along with joining the military, 18-year-olds can vote, marry, sign contracts, and even take on a crippling lifetime burden of student loan debt in pursuit of an education that may never land them a job," Reynolds writes.
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URL: http://www.sfexaminer.com/people/mark-tapscott?page=6&quicktabs_6=1
