DEMOCRATIC Senator Jim Webb of Virginia: “In many ways the campaign in Massachusetts became a referendum not only on health care reform but also on the openness and integrity of our government process. It is vital that we restore the respect of the American people in our system of government and in our leaders. To that end, I believe it would only be fair and prudent that we suspend further votes on health care legislation until Senator-elect Brown is seated.”

Thank you, Sen. Webb.

Via Don Surber.

[Update] Barney Frank, too? Oh, my.

COMMENT OF THE DAY: “I’m pro choice when it comes to aborting intrusive health care bills before they are born!”

OH, MY GOODNESS. Now pickup trucks are racist.

Guess I’ll have to go for that BMW after all.

SARAH PALIN: Mr. Brown goes to Washington ... in a pickup truck, no less!

It will be refreshing in 2011 to see a few more pickup trucks in Washington - and a few less armored SUVs and limousines.

[HAITI] IS "a man-made disaster first and foremost, and so it will remain."

Ann Applebaum gets it: "I also know that a successful recovery and reconstruction will require not just friends, not just money and not just optimism, but also a profound cultural and political shift, the kind of change that normally takes decades."

If Haiti is lucky enough to have decades left before the bleeding hearts destroy it.

SCOTT BROWN won the Massachusetts senate race.

So tell me, Mr. Olbermann ... How do those teabags taste?

Bitter, I expect.

PURPLE STATE PRESIDENTS don’t appoint Van Joneses and Anita Dunns, or turn the NEA into a quid pro quo Ministry of Approved Culture.

Read it all.

HEH. The peasants are revolting.

Read it all, including the comments.

Via Instapundit (second link).

A TRIUMPHANT DEFEAT: “The president packed nearly 75 percent of a 3,000 seat hall. Meanwhile, a similar rally for Scott Brown couldn't even provide seats for everyone, and left some out in the cold ...”

MICHAEL BARONE on the Brown victory in Massachusetts: “Obama and ‘the educated class’ think they know what is best for the little guy. The voters of Massachusetts (Massachusetts!) beg to differ. Is anyone in the White House listening?”

Read it all.

BYE, BYE, OBAMACARE. Nancy Pelosi announces that she doesn’t have the votes.

THOSE PHYSICIAN-REPORTERS in Haiti are actually practicing medicine and saving lives, and some journalism "ethicists" are having hissy fits.

While reporters should help when they can save a life or prevent profound harm, "I think it's very hard for an individual who is professionally and emotionally engaged in saving lives to be able to simultaneously step back from the medical work and practice independent journalistic truth-telling," said Bob Steele, journalism values scholar at the Poynter Institute and journalism professor at DePauw University.

"Truth-telling" is more important than saving lives? Not exactly.

(B)y focusing on the work being done by their own staff, "news organizations at some point appear to be capitalizing for promotional reasons on the intervention by journalists," Steele added.

Oh, no ... they're engaging in capitalism! Horrors. I guess Anderson Cooper should have let that kid die to retain his journalistic integrity.

No wonder "professional journalists" are held in such low regard.

UNDER OBAMACARE, 'patient choice' means the patient can choose to die.

Expect the best medicine that bureaucracy will allow.

NOTHING TO SAY. Umm, we got trounced?

LOCAL NEWS SHOWS are where the biased action is.

There is a case to be made that the steady drumbeat of hyped-up threats — SUV’s that roll over, kitchen-counter bacteria, road rage, swine flu, amber alerts and the stations’ willingness to enlist governments and institutions to solve those “perceived” problems, actually drives a lot of bad and unnecessary public policy.

Building a culture of dependency from the ground up. Read it all.

PRESIDENTIAL APPROVAL INDEX - one year later. The approval index is taken from the Rasmussen daily tracking poll, with the approval index being the difference between those who “strongly approve” the President and those who “strongly disapprove”.


President Obama’s “approval” is beginning to level out, probably somewhere around the -15 level, assuming that Tuesday’s Massachusetts “Brown out” doesn’t significantly alter the trend.

Breaking the data down further into those who strongly approve, strongly disapprove, and those who mildly approve/disapprove, the trend lines indicate that while the percentage of “strong disapprovals” is indeed leveling off, there is movement from those who are “strong approvals” to weaker levels of approval.

That trend is increasing, suggesting that his base is weakening.