It was only a tradition - a friendly pre-dawn breakfast hosted by the varsity cheerleaders at Katy’s Morton Ranch High School for the girls of the junior varsity squad. But this year, a grand jury indictment handed up on Wednesday alleges, something went horribly wrong.

WASHINGTON - Just when liberals thought it was safe to start identifying themselves as such, an acclaimed, veteran psychiatrist is making the case that the ideology motivating them is actually a mental disorder.

Thanks to three American senators, China will be pumping Iraqi oil.  - This morning, I had the honor of testifying before the House Budget Committee on the situation in Iraq. The discussion was polite and civilized, and was a reminder that even now it is possible for people who disagree about what to do in Iraq to argue without raised voices and disagreeable language (apart from the Code Pink women, yelling for those who think that shouting opponents down is preferable to arguing with them). Congressman Brian Baird once again demonstrated that it is possible even for those who bitterly opposed the war to recognize the importance of doing the right thing now--as well as the possibility of crossing the Republican-Democrat sectarian divide on this issue. One question came up repeatedly in the hearing that deserves more of an answer than it got, however: Why, after all the assistance we’ve given to Iraq over the past five years, was the first major Iraqi oil deal signed with China and not with an American or even a western company?

Certainly arguments can be raised that no criminal or mentally unbalanced individual should have access to guns. Between 1,500 and 2,000 deaths occur each year through the use of firearms.

If ever we needed proof that having an advanced degree doesn’t correlate with common sense, we got it this week. A group of college presidents from some of the most prestigious schools in the nation have called on lawmakers to consider lowering the drinking age. They call their effort the Amethyst Initiative. Why Amethyst? On their website, the erudite group explains to those of us who aren’t fluent in ancient Greek, the word is derived from the prefix “a”—meaning not—and “methustos,” which means intoxicated.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi wants to “save the planet,” and therefore will not allow an up or down vote in the House to open up offshore oil drilling. Apparently, Madame Speaker agrees with Crazy Harry Reid that “we’re hurting the planet” by using oil, and we ought to “stop using fossil fuels.”

Sen. Barack Obama announced today[Aug 1] an “emergency economic plan” he wants enacted by this fall that would use oil profits to give every “middle-class” American family $1,000.

Without doubt the Federal appointee who was most effective dealing with sex-trafficking was former Representative John R. Miller (R-WA). President George W. Bush has sought to end sex slavery within the United States and provide international leadership on the issue. Miller was appointed Director of the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons for the U.S. State Department and became an Ambassador-at-large on the issue of modern slavery. Miller elevated the fight to a high priority in the Bush Administration.

Your dollars for Happy Meals and Big Macs could end up paying for sex-change operations of McDonald’s employees if the home of the Golden Arches continues its promotion of homosexuality, according to a pro-family group that has joined an expanding boycott of the fast-food restaurants and its Ronald McDonald’s mascot.

I received my stimulus check yesterday. It was $600 and I put it into my checking account and immediately paid a bill that accounted for half of it. I have serious doubts that it did anything to stimulate an economy that is undergoing a crisis of confidence in its financial and government institutions.

New Jersey, already in debt to some $75 billion, faces another close-to $4 billion debt because its Governor, Jon Corzine, refuses to put the multi-billion-dollar “mortgage” issue on this November’s election ballot so the taxpayers can decide whether they want to saddle property owners with even more oppressive taxation.

It certainly seems so: the Obama organization is full of Islamic influence, public schools saturated with Progressives continue to promote Islam while fighting Christianity and Judaism tooth and nail, and the ACLU has followed the same agenda.

In the 1960s, the people of Florida borrowed a bunch of money to build a highway from Naples to the East coast.  To repay the construction costs, the state charged a small fee to each traveler who used the road.  The idea worked so well that in the 1980s, they borrowed another bunch of money to widen the road to four lanes to meet interstate highway standards.  The toll was increased to repay the construction costs.

First it was the presidential primary calendar that state legislatures across the country upended to give their voters a greater say this year in choosing candidates. Now a few states are orchestrating an overhaul of the way voters select the U.S. president. 

A desperate push is underway to enact the Climate Security Act sponsored by Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CN) and Sen. John Warner (R-VA). It would impose cap-and-trade mandates on anything that generates carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and that pretty much includes everything involving energy use, including backyard barbequing.