Tens of Thousands Expected to March for Life

The Washington Times reports:

More than 20,000 people are expected tomorrow to come to the District to mark the 34th anniversary of the Supreme Court's abortion ruling in the Roe v. Wade case.

Rallies are scheduled to begin at 8:45 a.m., followed by a March for Life procession and a youth Mass at the Verizon Center in Northwest.

The march is expected to begin at 1 p.m. and last more than three hours -- starting on the Mall, between Fourth and Seventh streets Northwest, then moving east across Pennsylvania Avenue, past the U.S. Capitol and ending at East Capitol and Second streets Northeast, outside the Supreme Court.

Click here for the rest of the story.

A Shorter State of the Union Address

The Washington Times reports:

President Bush on Tuesday will deliver a stripped-down State of the Union address, leaving out the usual laundry list of policy initiatives, and emphasizing common ground with Democrats in a nod to the new political reality on Capitol Hill, the White House said yesterday.

"Some of the old State of the Union formulas have kind of run their course," spokesman Tony Snow said.

"Part of the calculation here is that a lot of times these speeches, they just go on and on and you lose people," Mr. Snow said. "It's better to spend some time focusing on big issues so that people do get a sense of your engagement with them, and there will be opportunities to pick up other topics in much greater detail later on."

The presentation, which will skip the old, hourlong formula in which "every department and every agency gets a line or a mention," was devised because, as Mr. Snow said with a smile, "we want people to watch."

Hopefully this will be the beginning of a trend. State of the Union speeches are normally far too long.

Democrats Expected to Leave Border Open

From the AP:

Mayors of Texas border towns who met with Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff on Wednesday said they are confident a 850-mile fence will not be built on the U.S.-Mexico border.

Laredo Mayor Raul Salinas said it is "highly unlikely" that the fence, as authorized in a law signed by President Bush, would be funded.

...

Bush signed the law last year and the Republican-controlled Congress provided money to start work on the fence. But Republicans worry that now they have their majority on Capitol Hill, they never will see the fence built. Democrats in charge today generally oppose the fence.

Based on the comments of some Democrats, there is no rush.

Rep. Bennie Thompson, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said he wants the Bush administration to offer a plan for securing the northern and southern borders.

"My preference is to delay the construction of a fence until we have a plan," said Thompson, D-Miss.

That's not a plan, that's avoiding the issue. If Democrats really wanted a "plan", they could come up with one instead of demanding it from their greatest enemy.

Avoiding the Tough Choices

RealClearPolitics has an interesting piece by Robert Samuelson: "Seven Tough Choices We Will Not Make". It's a seven point plan to combat the budget deficit and dependence on foreign oil. It would probably take a crisis to seriously discuss most of his proposals. although several are nowhere near as simple as they sound (doubling the price of gas, for example, would most hurt the people who can't afford more efficient cars). But it's an interesting read.

The conclusion:

The fact that something like this won't soon be proposed -- let alone passed -- speaks volumes about our politics... There is little sense of common interests and shared obligations. Politicians resort to symbolic acts that seem more meaningful than they actually are: the minimum wage, for instance.

What results is a politically expedient world of make-believe that takes many sensible compromises off the table. Drilling in ANWR, for example, wouldn't ravage the environment. But for many Democrats, it's a cause celebre. Voting to open ANWR would be politically unpardonable. Similarly, some tax increases wouldn't destroy the economy; it has operated satisfactorily at higher levels of taxation. But for many Republicans, voting for any tax increase would also be a political death sentence. We are condemned to rituals that usually get us nowhere.

Confess!

Ok, who took my Butterfingers?

What's Wrong With Anecdotes

Michelle Malkin has an interesting piece in the Washington Times. It seems to support two basic propositions - don't trust the media and don't trust anecdotes (I'm already getting Al Gore debate flashbacks):

It's official: The editors of the New York Times have no shame. Don't take my word for it. Listen to the Times' own ombudsman, Byron Calame.

On Sunday, Mr. Calame wrote a stunning column debunking an April 9 New York Times Magazine cover story on abortion in El Salvador. The sensational piece by freelance writer Jack Hitt alleged that women there had been thrown in prison for 30-year terms for having had abortions. Mr. Hitt described his visit to one of them, inmate Carmen Climaco. "She is now 26 years old, four years into her 30-year sentence" for aborting an 18-week-old fetus, Mr. Hitt reported.

The magazine featured heart-rending photos of Climaco's 11-year-old daughter, eyes filled with tears as she clutched a photo of her jailed mom. Cruel. Horrible. Outrageous. And utterly, demonstrably, false. Climaco was actually convicted of murder for strangling her newborn baby.

...

Authorities found Climaco's dead baby hidden in a box wrapped in bags under her bed. Moreover, Lifesite reported, forensic examination showed it was a full-term normal delivery. The child was breathing at birth. The official cause of death was asphyxia by strangulation.

Mr. Hitt's main sources of info came from a pro-abortion group called Ipas. The group would profit from legalized abortion in El Salvador since it peddles abortion vacuum aspirators. Mr. Hitt's translator consulted for Ipas, which launched a fund-raising campaign to free Carmen Climaco and bring her to America. Pro-abortion groups recycled Climaco's story, citing the Times' bogus propaganda to scare up opposition to any abortion restrictions here.

...

Mr. Calame concluded that "Accuracy and fairness were not pursued with the vigor Times readers have a right to expect." That's too polite. The Times slung bull and refuse to clean it up. The Times' Climaco-gate, like the Associated Press' Jamil Hussein-gate and Reuters' fauxtography scandal and CBS's Rathergate, will go down in mainstream history as yet another case of textbook media malpractice.

Or maybe just a post-birth abortion.

Pelosi: Samoans Don't Deserve the Minimum Wage

The Washington Times reports:

House Republicans [Thursday] declared "something fishy" about the major tuna company in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's San Francisco district being exempted from the minimum-wage increase that Democrats approved [last] week.

"I am shocked," said Rep. Eric Cantor... noting that Mrs. Pelosi campaigned heavily on promises of honest government. "Now we find out that she is exempting hometown companies from minimum wage. This is exactly the hypocrisy and double talk that we have come to expect from the Democrats."

...

The bill... extends for the first time the federal minimum wage to the U.S. territory of the Northern Mariana Islands. However, it exempts American Samoa, another Pacific island territory that would become the only U.S. territory not subject to federal minimum-wage laws.

One of the biggest opponents of the federal minimum wage in Samoa is StarKist Tuna, which owns one of the two packing plants that together employ more than 5,000 Samoans, or nearly 75 percent of the island's work force. StarKist's parent company, Del Monte Corp., has headquarters in San Francisco, which is represented by Mrs. Pelosi. The other plant belongs to California-based Chicken of the Sea.

"There's something fishy going on here," said Rep. Patrick T. McHenry, North Carolina Republican.

During the House debate... on stem-cell research, Mr. McHenry raised a parliamentary inquiry as to whether an amendment could be offered that would exempt American Samoa from stem-cell research, "just as it was for the minimum-wage bill."

A clearly perturbed Rep. Barney Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat who was presiding, cut off Mr. McHenry and shouted, "No, it would not be."

So here's the message we're getting from Pelosi and the Democrats - American Samoans aren't American enough to earn the minimum wage. (Or at least not if their employers are from Pelosi's district.)