ECNN

The Democrats’ money-and-muscle operation is rebranding, not disbanding.
ACORN is not dissolving. But some of its local affiliates, in an effort to suggest they’re cutting ties with the organization, are giving themselves new names. The reason is money: ACORN cites a string of “vicious right-wing attacks” — and here I doff the purple pimp hat to James O’Keefe — that have made it hard for them to shake down their usual banker benefactors and nonprofit patrons. (more…)

Another senator who’s too good for Washington.
Some of us always suspected that Evan Bayh was a Tough Chooser, and he proved us right this month when, with a disdainful flourish, he announced he wouldn’t try to get himself reelected senator from Indiana. He had been giving off signals for a long time, talking about the “tough choices” that his fellow legislators refuse to make to solve the government’s fiscal problems, without once mentioning what those tough choices entail or, for that matter, making a tough choice himself. (more…)

Conventional wisdom in Washington has already figured out the winners and losers of next week’s White House health care summit.  The smart money is on President Obama. The silver-tongued orator will wow C-Span viewers, demonstrating his knack for substantive detail and cool debating style. (more…)

Why U.S.–China tensions have increased.
Last Thursday, the White House announced that President Obama would meet with the Dalai Lamai n Washington on February 18. China reacted swiftly, demanding that the event be cancelled. Earlier, Beijing had hinted that it would injure the American economy if the meeting went ahead. (more…)

Do you get the sense that they have not thought this through?
Is there an organizing principle behind the Obama administration’s decisions on how to deal with accused terrorists?

Announcing that Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, mastermind of 9/11, and four of his co-conspirators would be granted a civilian trial in Manhattan while the U.S.S. Cole bombers would receive a military tribunal, Attorney General Eric Holder was bombastic but opaque. “For over two hundred years,” he intoned, “our nation has relied on a faithful adherence to the rule of law to bring criminals to justice.” How did he decide who got a civilian trial, with its lavish legal protections, and who got a military tribunal? It was a case-by-case determination, he explained, depending upon “the nature of the offense, the location in which the offense occurred, the identity of the victims, and the manner in which the case was investigated.” Not a legal principle to be found anywhere in that explanation. (more…)