Michael Ramirez cartoon for Jan. 20, 2009 at Investor's Business Daily

Obama’s in and he’s all about change and…copying Bush? John Hinderaker at Power Line blog notes that President Barack Obama’s inauguration speech, along with his national security appointments, smacks of predecessor W. and notes that even comedians are commenting on the similarities. It doesn’t speak well of liberals, he writes, that they actually seem to be hoping that he’s lying, that his actions will somehow contradict all the rhetoric. Below, even Jon Stewart of The Daily Show jabs at the incoming president through an eerie montage of speech snippets comparing the two presidents, though the left-leaning TV news-satire host waxes apologetic.

Clinton did, Kennedy didn’t, and Geithner shouldn’t. Hillary Clinton is the new Secretary of State, but a once-favored candidate to replace her as a Senator from New York, Caroline Kennedy, has bowed out. Jim Geraghty argues for National Review Online that her withdrawal is a good thing, and that the whole case in her favor seemed built upon her royal blood. Meanwhile, for the same outlet, Byron York tears into Timothy Geithner, Obama’s pick for treasury secretary whose confirmation has been stalled somewhat ironically over a failure to properly file and pay taxes, because the man wouldn’t ‘fess up in the Senate hearing. Regardless, York predicts Geithner will prevail because his Democratic allies, who lead the Finance Committee, are rushing the vote.

Obama spells setbacks for the pro-life movement. The new President has said he would sign into law the Freedom of Choice Act if it lands on his desk, and some analysts suggest the latest iterations of the bill would roll back many of the pro-life movement’s hard-fought gains—forty states restricting late-term abortions for instance. Michael J. New, writing for NRO suggests conservatives have been in this position before, under the Clinton Administration, and that the movement to ban or restrict abortions wasn’t stamped out then, so there is cause for hope. G. Tracy Mehan, III takes a slightly more practical view for The American Spectator: Obama would be well-advised not to risk losing his immense political capital when his main task is to deal with the economy.

Don’t you get it? Hamas doesn’t just want a separate Palestine, but wants the annihilation of Israel, writes former New York Times foreign correspondent Clifford D. May for NRO. Israel likely timed its recent attack on Gaza, where Hamas fighters have been in control since last year, to beat the inauguration of Barack Obama, May argues. That’s because Obama likely would have made ending the battle one of his top priorities. But Israel had to fight, May argues, and the war is far from over—just to keep things in perspective.

If Obama brings back Carterism, it won’t be good. Many commentators have compared President Obama’s foreign policy prescription to that of former President Jimmy Carter. Arthur Herman lays out a thorough explanation in Commentary magazine of how and why Carter’s policies didn’t work nearly as well as Reagan’s, Clinton’s, or even W’s. Then he worries in writing that Obama’s pledge for “aggressive diplomacy” is meaningless and that this new Carterism almost belittles America’s record for tough peacekeeping. Are we shying away from rather than donning our mantle as leader of the free world?

“I hope he fails,” Rush Limbaugh says of Obama, but don’t take it out of context. The conservative talk show host defended his statement here, noting that he would be proud to earn the headline “Limbaugh: I Hope Obama Fails” from the “Drive-By Media.” But it’s about liberal economic policies that have failed and will continue to fail, he notes, and haven’t the liberals, after all, been out to secure the failure of Bush’s policies? R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. over at The American Spectator, comes to his defense after multiple stories (and even a senator) have focused on the sensationalism of the comment rather than the content of the argument.

Michael Ramirez cartoon from Investor's Business Daily for Jan. 12, 2009

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict may seem old news, but it’s entering a new phase, argues Jonathan Schanzer, deputy executive director of the Jewish Policy Center. Mark Hemingway of National Review Online discusses Schanzer’s new book, Hamas vs. Fatah: The Struggle for Palestine, and relays Schanzer’s argument that the mainstream media have oversimplified the conflict by underestimating the internal divisions in Palestine. After all, Fatah and Hamas aren’t allies. Israel’s current struggle is with Gaza alone.

President George W. Bush held his final press conference yesterday morning. Fox News commentators and guests offer analysis.

And here Bush gets a little more personal with Fox’s Brit Hume. The president explains why he is so calm and content as he prepares to leave office, and tells Hume that he’s even planning to write a book that will explain and defend some of the most controversial decisions he made while in office.

Is it a new New Deal or not, and does it even matter? President-elect Barack Obama’s record-smashing stimulus plan will likely top $1 trillion when it’s finally approved. Jonah Goldberg writes over at NRO’s The Corner blog that only liberals are comparing this strategy with FDR’s New Deal and adds that conservatives feel the comparison is moot. But Pat Buchanan would apparently disagree. In an editorial for Investor’s Business Daily, Buchanan argues not only that Obama seems to be channeling Roosevelt, but that massive spending is more likely to get us into trouble than to bail us out of it. In a separate IBD editorial, Lawrence Kudlow sees a more conservative tinge to Obama’s plan, drawing a parallel to Reagan’s tax-cut plan. Big government, limited government, or something in between? Obama keeps us guessing.

Google searches are speeding climate change (but then, isn’t everybody?). A physicist is trying to publish his findings on the amount of energy consumed by Google’s data centers every time you try to run a search (the energy used boiling water for a cup of tea equals two searches). William Teach responds sarcastically at Right Wing News, suggesting that the global warming “Believers” log off and stop using the Internet. Teach writes that he did 15 Google searches after reading the article, just for fun.

Eco-warriors: stop procreating, humans hurt the planet. Feminists: stop procreating, it’s sexist. Cassy Fiano writes on her blog and on Right Wing News that the newest argument in favor of the extinction of mankind is that sexual reproduction is a sexist, culturally oppressive holdover from a less civilized time, more or less. She goes on to excoriate modern feminism as it drifts toward something like Stalinism. But hey, sex without reproduction would be really fun for about, say, one generation.

Always a rebel, Mickey Rourke’s Hollywood comeback doesn’t preclude careless comments—you know, supporting Bush. It’s unpopular in Hollywood to defend the outgoing president, writes Andrew Breitbart of Big Hollywood, but having just won the best actor Golden Globe award for his performance in The Wrestler, Rourke did just that. Bush was simply “in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Rourke said, and the situation after 9/11 would have been near impossible for any conceivable leader. Breitbart suggests that Rourke’s peer-slash-rival Sean Penn had a much inferior and less ballsy dalliance into politics when he publicly supported Fidel Castro’s regime, and writes that any “no friend of Sean Penn is a friend of mine.”

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer sued Santa and won. Check out the parody column at the Globe and Mail. It’s a cautionary tale about discrimination, or rather a roast on political correctness…

Feliz ‘dinejad! says National Review Online’s Mark Steyn. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gave the “alternative Christmas message” on BBC 4 this year. Here’s the story and the full text of Ahmadinejad’s message, and here’s the response from NRO’s Michael Rubin.

We’re safer since 9/11 because of the policies of the Bush Administration, writes Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff in a Washington Times op-ed. John Hinderaker at Power Line agrees, but places less emphasis on airport and border security and more on Bush’s aggressiveness overseas. Hinderaker adds that he hopes the Obama Administration realizes we need to stay aggressive. But how the president-elect will lead is still a big question mark.

Huffington’s read on the economic crisis is wrong, argues David Harsanyi at RealClearPolitics. In a recent post on the same site, Arianna Huffington wrote that laissez-faire capitalism is dead, but Harsanyi rebuts, pointing out that federal regulation has actually grown during the Bush years. Harsanyi decries leftist scare tactics and argues we shouldn’t use a temporary recession to make foundational changes to the economy.

Obama shouldn’t go after the Bush Administration for war crimes, writes Mort Kondracke, executive editor of Roll Call. With “Bush haters” calling for investigations into war crimes related to the global war on terror, “Obama should make it clear right now that he opposes such action,” Kondracke writes. Such calls are a sign of “political vengeance” rather than truth-seeking, and a probe would disrupt national unity and, more importantly, morale within the intelligence community during wartime. Putting a stop to such talk now, Obama would also prevent the “unseemly” possibility that Bush blanket pardons everyone involved in the GWOT on his way out.

Environmental groups and the Navy reached an agreement over whales and sonar. Separate from a case in which the Supreme Court ruled the Navy could not be unduly required to protect whales, this case contends that sonar is dangerous to whales and other marine animals around the globe and brings a partial victory to both sides.

As Israeli forces step up their assaults on Hamas, Obama remains relatively quiet. The New York Times reports that the President-elect is deferring to President Bush, but notes that Obama’s public comments on the recent escalation in the on-going Israeli-Palestinian conflict represent a near-endorsement of Israel’s air strikes.

Blago’s attorney plans to use an Obama report to vindicate the scandal-ridden Illinois governor. Barack Obama released an internal report last week showing he and Governor Rod Blagojevich had not schemed to fill the President-elect’s vacant Senate seat. Now the attorney will submit it as evidence to the courts. Of course, even if it clears Obama of any suspicion, Blago’s still in hot water.

First Lady Laura Bush defends her husband’s presidency and talks about women’s rights in Afghanistan and Iraq. She appeared on Fox News Sunday this week.

Republicans quarrel over a song distributed by one of their own: “Barack the Magic Negro.” Chip Saltsman, a candidate for chair of the Republican National Committee, mailed a holiday CD including the above-named song, prompting a mixed reaction from his rivals for the position, and sparking a public discussion over media sensitivity to race as the nation prepares to inaugurate its first black president. One of the writers of “Puff the Magic Dragon,” the tune to which the song is played, responded via the Huffington Post.

The overall murder rate is dropping, but black teens are killing more, according to a report released today by a criminal justice professor at Northwestern University. The numbers diverge along racial lines for juveniles aged 14-17, with hardly an increase in the murder rate for whites but a 34 percent increase for blacks—not good news for anyone.

Wireless carriers are bracing for a storm on Inauguration Day. It will be the first presidential inauguration in which mobile phones are so ubiquitous, the Los Angeles Times reports. With people expected to call friends, send text messages, and snap and send photos by the thousands, carriers are worried so much digital traffic could jam the networks. They’re encouraging people to moderate their usage and offer a few tips for communicating that day.

Mr. Craig’s restroom has lost much of its novelty. Someone apparently offered $5,000 for the restroom stall at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport where Senator Larry E. Craig was arrested in 2007 in a sex sting. Now fewer tourists are taking interest in the place and complaints of lewd conduct there have stopped or at least dropped in number. The airport, by the way, refused to sell the bathroom fixture.

Obama’s stimulus plan has creeped its way to almost $800 billion. The President-elect is reacting to news of an ever-worsening economy and projections that 3.5 million people could lose their jobs in the next year. Some are fearing the stimulus plan could open the door to Congressional pet projects rather than programs that will really drive economic recovery. Vice President-elect Joe Biden defended the plan with a staid response: only bold moves will rescue the economy.

For what it’s worth, Washington hospitality workers will have jobs. With numerous inauguration events planned, the need for waiters and bartenders is up. Probably no consolation for the actors and artists in Los Angeles who make their living the same way.

Biden and Cheney aren’t getting along as well as Bush and Obama. In a bout of back-and-forth criticism, Biden has called Cheney the most dangerous Vice President in history, and in a Fox News interview (below, about halfway through), Cheney responded by criticizing Biden’s knowledge of the Constitution. Christmas cheer, anyone?

Blago’s “Individual D” revealed, and seeks immunity. There have been no accusations of wrongdoing from the authorities, but businessman Raghuveer P. Nayak has apparently sought legal protection in exchange for cooperating in the ongoing investigation into Governor Rod Blagojevich’s alleged scheme to sell President-elect Barack Obama’s now-vacant Senate seat. Blago apparently wanted to appoint Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. and pressured Nayak to pony up campaign money. The Chicago drama is getting more interesting by the day.

VHS: An Obituary. Before the entertainment industry was panicking over competition from DVD sales, there was the videocassette. It revolutionized the entertainment industry, and this Christmas will likely be the last one you’ll be able to find one anywhere other than a 99-cent store, as the L.A. Times reports. So, a big THANK YOU to VHS for ushering in the era of movies-on-demand and personal movie libraries. I wonder how long Blu-ray will last.

In preparation for Christmas, an homage to the Man Behind the Story. If you haven’t seen A Christmas Story, you can catch it during the annual marathon on Dec. 25. For now, you can learn everything you ever wanted to know about Jean Shepherd, the writer, radio personality and narrator from the movie who wrote the stories on which the film was based.

Is “Palin-ized” the hot political put-down? Politicians have said New York Senate candidate Caroline Kennedy is “Sarah Palin-ized” because of the way she and her team are handling the media, including asking reporters to submit questions in writing first. Somehow Palin has managed to leave a permanent mark on American politics.

Michael Ramirez cartoon from Investor's Business Daily - 12/16/08

Dennis Miller rips into Barack Obama over the Chicago corruption scandal. Talk show host Bill O’Reilly tries to play it neutral, but Miller takes the President-elect to task for being either oblivious or disingenuous. Meanwhile, Michelle Malkin at National Review assesses just how involved disgraced Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s wife was in all the backdoor shenanigans, in her piece The Real Housewives of Crook County.

Newsweek’s cover story “hero” isn’t much of a hero, writes Scott Johnson at Powerlines blog. The Newsweek story puts a positive spin on Thomas Tamm, the whistle blower who played a prominent role in tipping off the New York Times to a Pulitzer-Prize winning story about the government’s secret wiretapping of Americans and others living inside the borders. Apparently, the government has hounded Tamm ever since, but Johnson suggests both Tamm and the Times could be liable to criminal prosecution for breaking espionage laws.

America must protect us from Muslim fanatics (and shoe attacks). After an Iraqi journalist threw both of his shoes at President Bush at a press conference, a sign of serious disrespect in the Muslim world (no kidding), conservative talk show host Bill O’Reilly insists we need tough but smart policies to protect Americans.

Better not make hasty decisions in an economic crisis, writes Jonah Goldberg at National Review. We’ve learned a lot from past mistakes and we shouldn’t make them again. He’s referring to the Fed tightening the money supply.

Ann Coulter defends her reference to the President-elect as B. Hussein Obama, taking on Alan Colmes and Pat Caddell. The squabbling began when Obama announced he would use his middle name for the Inauguration.

Michael Ramirez cartoon from Investor's Business Daily, Dec. 4

Democrats value politics more than the success of the U.S. auto industry, argue the editors at National Review. The deal is more about preserving union jobs and subsidizing hybrid vehicles, and stipulations such as the one that prevents automakers from seeking injunctions against states like California, which has stricter emissions standards than the national average, will make it difficult for the industry to survive. Automakers argue that, after all, they can’t afford to make different cars for different states.

The Blagojevich corruption scandal marks just one of many for Democrats this year, writes Michelle Malkin at National Review. Now it’s Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, who was arrested on suspicion of numerous counts of pay-to-play deals, including one that would have sold President-elect Barack Obama’s vacant Senate seat to the highest bidder. But this year other Dems were caught in the act: Democratic Representatives William Jefferson and Charlie Rangel, Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, and Massachusetts State Senator Diane Wilkerson, to name a few. The important question for right wing radio personality Hugh Hewitt: how far Obama will be willing to let U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald pursue the Illinois corruption case.

Newsweek’s political agenda is showing, and it’s all rainbow-y. Married writers Mark and Mollie Hemingway tag team the weekly publication, where the cover story makes the “religious case for gay marriage.” Both Hemingways bash the Lisa Miller article for getting the Scripture wrong, and Mr. Hemingway points out that the editor’s response to the backlash further demonstrates the magazine’s decision to take a solid political stance.

Obama’s speechwriter would have lost his career if he were Republican, argues Andrew Breitbart at The Washington Times. The image above, which was posted briefly on Facebook, shows 27-year-old Jon Favreau and a buddy groping a cardboard cutout of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. Dee Dee Myers, who worked for the sex-scandal-stained Clinton administration, expressed outrage at the denigration and humiliation of women, though Ed Morrissey at Hot Air downplayed the whole incident as a joke.

Obama unveiled the biggest public works program since the federal interstate system in the 1950s. Lawmakers have proposed spending between $400 million and $1 trillion on programs designed to green buildings, repair highways, renovate schools, expand high-speed Internet access in underserved areas, and giving hospitals electronic access to medical records. Obama has warned that with a sagging economy things are going to get worse before they get better. Yesterday he spoke to Tom Brokaw on “Meet the Press”—read the transcript.

Automakers could get a $15 billion by next week, but with strings. Lawmakers are preparing legislation that would create a seven-member board composed of Cabinet members and a Bush-appointed chair. The board would oversee the restructuring of the Big Three (GM, Ford, and Chrysler) and would hold them accountable for every transaction more than $25 million.

Congress will soon be welcoming its first Vietnamese-American. Nine-term Louisiana incumbent William Jefferson lost his seat to Republican Anh Cao (pronounced “Gow”) in a surprise upset. The election had been delayed because of Hurricane Gustav. Jefferson had been indicted for corruption charges, though the same happened to Cao last year and he’s still awaiting a date for his trial. One observer noted that New Orleans voters “don’t generally turn out candidates with ethics problems.”

The alleged 9/11 plotters have offered to confess, but the military judge won’t accept any guilty pleas until they’ve had time to go through formal proceedings. Some believe the move was a last-ditch effort by the Guantanamo detainees to challenge the current system by martyring themselves before the incoming President acts to shut down the military commissions altogether. The mother of one 9/11 victim approved of the court’s decision to proceed cautiously.

Now Kanye West’s cousin is under investigation in the death of the rapper’s mother. After undergoing a five-and-a-half hour cosmetic surgery last year, Donda West received home care from her nephew, Stephan Scoggins, a registered nurse. Scoggins apparently stayed with her overnight after the surgery but left the next day when she seemed to be doing well. He intended to return again the second night, but a friend found her without a pulse in the evening. If the California Board of Registered Nursing finds Scoggins negligent, he could lose his nurse’s license.

Barbra Streisand, Morgan Freeman, George Jones, Twyla Tharp, and the Who’s Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey received lifetime achievement awards in performance arts at the Kennedy Center over the weekend. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice hosted a dinner on Saturday as part of the event, which CBS will broadcast on Dec. 30.

Michael Ramirez cartoon for December 2, 2008 at Investor's Business Daily.

Barack Obama may have flip-flopped on Hillary’s foreign policy experience, but that’s small potatoes. Allahpundit, in a post at Hot Air, writes that lying is to be expected from the President-elect, but the more important issue is that he has made ambassador to the U.N. a Cabinet-level position, signaling to Hillary Clinton that she can be replaced, and that Obama means business when he says he wants soft diplomacy to play a bigger role in his administration.

Advice to Obama: don’t repeat the mistakes of Hoover and Roosevelt. Investor’s Business Daily points out this economic downturn is serious but by no means as severe as the Depression, but warns that we still ought to heed past lessons. In a nutshell: support free trade, cut taxes across the board, don’t rely on big government projects as economic stimuli, and support the Fed as it cuts rates.

Piracy is one of those unconventional threats Washington worries about: so get ‘em where it hurts. Seth Cropsey argues on The Weekly Standard’s blog and in an article that arming merchant vessels and increasing Navy patrols may help, but nothing will work quite so well as finding and attacking the pirates on shore (in Somalia), something the Russians have suggested.

Chambliss’ win in Georgia could spell a tough midterm election for Dems in 2010. When Saxby Chambliss beat Jim Martin by 16 points in what was expected to be a very close race, Democrats lost their chance at a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. Ed Morrissey at Hot Air argues that Democratic gains in 2008 don’t mark an endorsement of their policies and warns them against moving any farther to the left. The win also means Senate Dems will be unlikely to step in and decide the outcome in Minnesota, where Al Franken is caught up in a protracted recount effort—not without a chance for 60 in the Senate, argues Gary Gross at Let Freedom Ring.

Gay marriage won’t be all bad, but enough with the scorched-earth tactics, says Jonah Goldberg in an opinion piece for the L.A. Times. Goldberg cites vandalism against Mormon temples, mailing envelopes filled with white powder to Mormons, Mormon blacklists, and points out angrily that the Hollywood liberals who would decry McCarthyism are employing the same methods against proponents of Prop 8.

Don’t compare Bush to Nixon, says Fox News journalist Chris Wallace to film director Ron Howard. Wallace was at a film screening for Howard’s new movie, Frost/Nixon, about the former president who resigned after the Watergate scandal. Wallace argued that Nixon’s crimes were motivated purely by personal political gain, while President George W. Bush’s (referring to rendition and waterboarding) were motivated by a desire to protect his country. So there.

Obama’s top picks for national security constitute a “Team of Rivals.” With Hillary Clinton as secretary of state, Robert Gates as defense secretary, and former NATO commander Gen. James Jones as national security adviser, the new team members have a more hawkish record on foreign policy than the president-elect. All, however, will be pushing for a more diplomatic approach than the previous administration.

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal may be the GOP’s own superstar. Though he denies he has any plans to run for president in 2012, some see a fight coming among Jindal and other prominent Republicans. Jindal spoke in Iowa last weekend, and former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin are both expected to do the same as they compete for Iowans’ attention. The chief strategist from the McCain campaign said it’s not a question of if Jindal becomes president, but when.

High-paid anchors are getting the pink slip at TV news stations across the country. In a sagging economy, it’s apparently more practical to hire fresh faces (that you can pay less) than to keep the veterans.

Two more Senate races stand between Democrats and a filibuster-proof majority. Democrat Jim Martin came just close enough on Nov. 4 to Georgia Republican incumbent Saxby Chambliss to secure a runoff. Dems now hold 58 seats in the Senate; 60 would give them the power to bulldoze legislation past Republican opposition. The other contested seat is in Minnesota between Al Franken and Norm Coleman. The recount is still underway, with Coleman ahead by 270 votes, with each side contesting nearly 3,000 ballots to be reviewed by the board.

Some consensus is emerging on universal health care in America, according to the L.A. Times. Hospitals, doctors, labor unions, major businesses, insurance companies and lawmakers are beginning to agree on what such a system would look like. They wouldn’t drop employer-provided insurance; European-style single-payer systems are “off the table.” And change is needed, according to some leading institutions, including Kaiser-Permanente and Mayo Clinic, because Americans aren’t getting their money’s worth from the current system.

Today's Michael Ramirez cartoon from Investor's Business Daily.

The current financial crisis has already cost more than World War II, writes financial blogger Barry Ritholtz, and that’s after adjusting for inflation. It’s hard to conceptualize $4.6165 trillion (Bloomberg reports it as $7.76 trillion), so try this: government bailouts, including the recent addition of Citigroup, amount to more than the cost of the Marshall Plan, the Louisiana Purchase, the race to the moon, the savings and loan crisis, the Korean War, the New Deal, the invasion of Iraq, the Vietnam War, and NASA combined.

But CEO’s with fat salaries are just a distraction. If every oil company executive worked for free, writes Thomas Sowell at National Review, it wouldn’t lower the price of a gallon of gas by a dime or the cost of a car by even one percent. It’s an age-old story in which politicians give us someone to hate and blame in order to grab more power for themselves. Example: pols pressure banks into lending to people that normally wouldn’t qualify and when the economy turns sour, they blame deregulation and call for greater government control. He’s not having it.

A Secretary of State Hillary Clinton should worry conservatives, argues Paul Mirengoff at Power Line. Many conservatives espouse America’s rights to resist international pressures and to protect its own self-government, and they are willing to project American power to do so. While Obama’s picks for national security so far have shown no great desire to shake things up, he still inclines toward moving America into the international mainstream, Mirengoff writes, and Clinton has shown no indication she’ll act as a counterweight to that.

The Holy Land Foundation is going down, and CAIR should go with it, argues Scott Johnson. HLF, a Muslim charity, was found to have given financial support to Hamas, which the U.S. lists as a terrorist organization. In two separate posts, one at Power Line and one at National Review, Johnson lays out why it is one of the government’s most significant cases against terrorist conspirators in the U.S. since 9/11, and applauds the government’s outing of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as an un-indicted co-conspirator in the case.

At this rate, the Minnesota recount could drag on for months. Power Line blogger Scott Johnson has been following the recount, including state Senate hopeful Al Franken’s efforts to get some previously rejected absentee ballots back in the count. And he seems to be calling former Washington Democratic Party Chair Paul Berendt’s involvement in the process a “nightmare scenario.”

No need to discuss Barack Obama’s citizenship any more. Right Wing News blogger John Hawkins writes that he still receives e-mails asking why he has decided to stop writing about Obama’s legitimacy. Pointing to his post of a month earlier, he reminds those clinging to the belief that Obama is not really a citizen that the state of Hawaii has acknowledged they have a copy of his live birth certificate and that a newspaper clipping from 1961 proves he’s American. Discussion over.

Barack Obama won through media spinning and voter ignorance, or so seems to be the lesson of a popular video circulating on Youtube.

A samurai-sword wielding assailant was shot dead in front of the Hollywood Scientology center. The guard who shot him said he was close enough to hurt them when he fired. Word is, he used to be a member, but not many details have been released, yet. The controversial, star-magnet church hit the media limelight again when anti-Scientology protesters demonstrated outside the preview of Arthur Miller’s “All My Sons” because Katie Holmes, wife of the religion’s most famous celebrity, Tom Cruise, has a starring role.

Kanye West gave his award to a fellow artist after he won at the American Music Awards Sunday night—among other interesting moments. Here’s the scorecard.

The first black presidency already may have sparked a rash of violence coming from white extremists. The Ku Klux Klan is making a comeback, and violent hate crimes have been on the rise in the three weeks following the election of Democrat Barack Obama, according to an L.A. Times article. Looks like to become post-racial we may yet need to iron out a few wrinkles.

Obama supporters are beginning to worry he’s not as far to the left as they hoped. Much of his future administration is shaping up to be Clinton and Bush holdovers, calling his campaign for change into question. Of course, he has chosen several close friends and associates to serve in his Cabinet or as senior advisers. And Wall Street, at least, seems to appreciate his pick for Treasury Secretary, though many of his views remain a mystery.

The Pope apparently doesn’t have much faith in interfaith conversations. In a letter to a scholar-politician, portions of which were published in an Italian newspaper, Pope Benedict XVI said “interreligious dialogue in the strict sense of the word is not possible,” though that hasn’t prevented the Vatican from meeting with Muslim leaders to find common positions on issues such as terrorism and religious freedom. Meanwhile, in Southern California, Jewish college students visited mosques as part of a national “twinning campaign” in which Jews and Muslims team up to fight Islamophobia and anti-Semitism.

Citigroup: add one more bailout to the pile. The government has approved a deal to secure about $306 billion in loans and securities and to directly invest $20 billion in the company. It was the third time in three months the government has tried to contain the unraveling financial crisis.

Hollywood’s chewing its cheeks over the same-sex marriage ban. It’s a place that has celebrated free speech and weathered the McCarthyist witch hunts. Now Hollywood insiders who supported Prop 8 are being “outed.” Film Independent has gotten flak for defending Richard Raddon, the director of the L.A. Film Festival, who donated $1,500 to the Yes on 8 campaign. And the director of a nonprofit theater organization in Sacramento resigned after complaints of his donations to the campaign.

Should we take these Somali Jack Sparrows seriously? John Hawkins at Right Wing News finds the recent prevalence of pirates in the news almost laughable and argues the U.S. shouldn’t get involved (but not without first taking a few jabs at President-elect Barack Obama’s policy of talking to the enemy without preconditions). Mark Steyn, blogging for National Review, has a more serious take on the rise of piracy.

Eric Holder is the worst possible pick for Attorney General right now, according to the editors at National Review. He’d be softer on terrorists, and he helped push through several questionable pardons and commutations of sentence on behalf of former president Bill Clinton. Moreover, the editors write, he massages statistics to portray police as racial profilers, supports affirmative action, wants to stop the detention of enemy combatants at Gitmo, and “favors income redistribution to address the supposed root causes of crime.”

The Right is finding new hope in…Hillary Clinton? Noemie Emery, writing for The Weekly Standard, calls Clinton “The Great Right Hope” and traces how campaign 2008 transformed the former first lady into a social conservative champion of middle-America. Meanwhile, Right Wing News blogger John Hawkins simply can’t see how Obama supporters could be happy with a White House reprise for the Clinton clan.

Obama and Clinton have smeared Reaganomics; it’s time to get real about taxes. So argues Peter Ferrara in The American Spectator. Data from the IRS and the Congressional Budget Office actually show that the bottom 40 percent of income earners pay negative 3.8 percent of taxes, in fact drawing money out of income tax revenues, he writes. The real middle class, only have to pay 4.7 percent of all federal income taxes…and the whole system a result of Reagan’s Republican supply-side economics.

McCain seeks a fifth term in the U.S. Senate, and that’s not good for Republicans. McCain’s term is up in 2010. News of his intent was leaked and hasn’t been publicly confirmed, but already bloggers are reacting. Right Wing News’ John Hawkins calls McCain “uniquely destructive to conservatism and the Republican Party” and goes on the record saying he’d rather have a Democrat. So much for the Maverick.

Hillary Rodham Clinton may be the next secretary of state. Obama’s team has begun to scour former president Bill Clinton’s financial ties for signs of conflict of interest, signaling to some Democratic insiders that the new administration is considering his wife for the cabinet post.

President-elect Barack Obama appeared on 60 Minutes yesterday to discuss the transition to the White House from both political and personal standpoints. He stressed the need to quickly assemble a national security team to prevent vulnerabilities to terrorist attacks during the transition, and he said it would be his job to restore confidence in the financial and consumer markets. Of course, he also had to address the issue of picking the presidential pooch. Also yesterday, Obama officially resigned from the U.S. Senate.

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Democratic National Convention protesters are being vindicated. Seven of the first nine defendants to face trial for participating in “anarchic demonstrations” have been cleared. One was convicted, and the other faces a retrial after the jury deadlocked. In all, 106 people were arrested in Denver on the opening night of the convention, and 50 of those eventually pleaded guilty. Defendants and their attorneys are calling the acquittals an embarrassment to Denver and are calling for the remaining cases to be dropped.

Dan Rather’s quest to clear himself may be paying off. The former CBS Evening News anchor had been pushed out after it came out that an investigation on 60 Minutes relied on false documents to show that President George W. Bush was given special treatment by theTexas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War. Rather has invested $2 million of his own money into a lawsuit against his former employer, and he has uncovered some documents that suggest CBS actively sought G.O.P.-approved panelists to investigate how it handled the Bush segment, apparently so the network could stop Republican criticism.

MTV’s Total Request Live had its final show on Sunday, but not without a three-hour star-jammed celebration featuring live performances by Beyoncé, Ludacris, Nelly, Snoop Dogg, Backstreet Boys and 50 Cent. Many other stars attended. Eminem and Christina Aguilera called in their congratulations. The show spanned a decade and 2,500 episodes.

Let’s not bail out the auto industry, too, writes Rich Lowry of National Review. Giants like GM and Ford have long mismanaged their empires, and the argument that the country can’t afford to lose 100,000 jobs casts Detroit automakers as job and welfare programs, he writes. Bailing them out would put us on track for a new wave of protectionism from free-market competition. And President-elect Obama has signaled he may be willing to do it.

On economic policy, Barack Obama’s not really about change. So holds Jonathan Weil at Bloomberg. The president-elect chose 17 people last week for his transition economic advisory board, and many of them ought not to be guiding his decisions on financial matters because they’ve got shady pasts of their own. One of them, former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, was chairman of Citigroup’s executive committee when the bank “helped Enron Corp. cook its books.” There’s more.

Should the courts defer to the popular vote on Prop 8? Jeffrey Rosen and Richard Just, respectively the legal affairs editor and managing editor at The New Republic, have an on-going debate on the issue. The first two parts are here and here. In the third part, Rosen argues that when the Supreme Court’s constitutional authority over an issue is uncertain, as he says they are in the case of abortion and gay marriage, then it should defer to the people and to the Legislature. It’s a high-minded debate.

A black man is president; America no longer needs racial quotas, writes Ken Blackwell in National Review. Racial preference programs harm minorities, anyway, he writes. For example, a 20-percent minimum requirement for minority attendance at a school quickly becomes a 20-percent maximum in practice. Barack Obama has championed change and put forward a vision of a post-racial America, and that’s something everyone should celebrate.

What-next fest continues. David Brooks at the New York Times sees two camps in the struggle for philosophical control over the Republican Party: the Traditionalists, who want to cut taxes, cut big government, and restrict immigration; and the Reformers, who want to address inequality and middle-class economic worries and who tend to see global warming as a more serious issue. His prediction? The Traditionalists will win the near-term battle, but the outcome of the war is uncertain. Over at National Review, Deroy Murdock’s mantra: “What would Reagan do?”

What about Sarah Palin? She appeared in an interview with Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren yesterday, covering everything from the clothes fiasco to why she feels the McCain-Palin ticket lost. Part one is below. Part two is here.