Burt Prelutsky has an excellent column on Townhall.com about the silliness of Democrats accusing Republicans of being divisive.

Democrats boast about encouraging dissent while accusing anyone who disagrees with them of being divisive.

Both parties are guilty of overusing the goal of "uniting the country." What politician, or any salesman for that matter, doesn’t want to unite the country behind his or her campaign? Can you imagine a salesman advertising that he only wants half the people to buy his products? Instead of criticizing the politicians, perhaps I should say that the voters are too prone to buy into the "unite the country" sham.

If you’re not alarmed yet over how the government is wasting your money, read these two articles:

Hemingway’s Cats, Pampered by Uncle Sam

Lawmaker Questions $318K for Turtle Crossing Fence

Why do liberals want to give a free pass to everyone who has had bad things happen to them? The families of 9/11 victims can do no wrong. New Orleans residents affected by Hurricane Katrina are not held accountable for their actions post-Katrina. If you’re poor your bad behavior can be excused. Ann Coulter calls this the "doctrine of infallibility." This means that if you’ve been screwed by life we can’t complain if you screw up our lives.
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A middle school in the Northeast wants to pass out birth-control pills to eleven year-old girls. Another middle school had some boys arrested and jailed for slapping girls on their butts. If they’re not even going to allow a little flirtation why do they think the girls need birth-control?
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Some pediatricians are now interrogating their patients about the ownership and handling of guns by their parents. The pediatricians’ professional organizations encourage it. Some even report what they find to local law enforcement agencies. To me this is an egregious invasion of privacy. And it is clearly politically motivated.

I never hear about pediatricians being concerned about the ownership and handling of five-gallon plastic buckets. About the same number of children are killed each year by drowning in the buckets as are killed by guns. Should someone start a bucket-control advocacy?
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From a CBS News report that some democrats are hoping that Al Gore being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize will cause him to decide to enter the race for president:

"A lot of people are sacrificing a lot," said Draft Gore founder Friedlander. "People are donating to this cause who can’t afford to donate. But we believe very strongly he is very, very desperately needed. This is not a campaign of people who think he’s a great guy. This is not about him. It’s about the country."

That doesn’t say much for Hillary, Barack and the rest of the lineup of Democrat candidates. But if I were a Democrat I’d probably be desperate too — just not for Gore.

Fox News reports:

"Currently only about one in three African-Americans who goes to an American law school passes the bar on the first attempt and a majority never become lawyers at all," says UCLA law professor Richard Sander.

In an article published in the Stanford Law Review, Sander and his research team concluded several thousand would-be black lawyers either dropped out of law school or failed to pass the bar because of affirmative action.

Known as the ‘mismatch’ effect, Sander claims students who are unprepared and whose academic credentials are below the median are admitted to law schools they are unqualified to attend. If those same students instead were to go to less elite or competitive schools, more would graduate, pass the bar and become lawyers.

There are challengers of Sander’s findings, but it seems to me that his findings should be intuitively obvious. By definition, the recipients of AA admissions to the law schools don’t start out evenly with the other students. If they were approaching law school with knowledge, skills and abilities on par with the other students they wouldn’t need AA help.

It is reasonable to expect that some of the AA students will possess the determination to succeed despite starting with a disadvantage. It is also reasonable to expect that many of them won’t.

Making the grade at Harvard or some other prestigious university is great but there is nothing wrong with graduating with a good record at your local State U. In fact, most of the people that keep this nation running come from the "lesser" schools. I graduated from a very small state college and had a successful career as a mathematician for the United States Air Force. I’m not rich and famous but I’m happy with who I am and what I achieved.

A Fox News poll found that:

…more people think Clinton is "very" qualified to be president than any of the other top contenders. Setting aside how they would vote, nearly half of Americans (47 percent) say they think Clinton is "very" qualified, followed by John McCain at 34 percent, Giuliani at 32 percent, Barack Obama at 23 percent, and Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson both at 16 percent.

What is surprising to me about these results is that more than half of those polled don’t know that all these candidates are fully "qualified" to be president. The actual qualifications to be president are just a little stronger than being a breathing human being: The President of the United States must be a natural-born citizen who has lived in the United States for 14 years and is more than 35 years old. That’s it! You and your neighbors are most likely qualified to be president.

Okay, I understand that the pollster and most of those polled were probably thinking more in terms of the background and experience of the candidates than in terms of the legal qualifications, but that’s not what the poll asked. This is the problem I have with polls. There is no way to know if the respondents are interpreting the questions the way the pollster intended.

It occurred to me that it might be helpful if I published some keys to the pronunciation of the President of Iran’s name. I’ve picked up a couple on the web and made up one myself. Here’s what I have to date:

1. I might need a job
2. Ox blood dinner jacket
3. I’m a demagogue
4. Ah’m a nut job (from Beda and Leno)

If I hear others I’ll add them to the list. Let me know if you have one.