White House plays Flight 253 blame game

The Prowler reports at the American Spectator:

[A]s it became clear internally that the Administration had suffered perhaps its most embarrassing failure in the area of national security, senior Obama White House aides, including chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod and new White House counsel Robert Bauer, ordered staff to begin researching similar breakdowns -- if any -- from the Bush Administration. "The idea was that we'd show that the Bush Administration had had far worse missteps than we ever could," says a staffer in the counsel's office. "We were told that classified material involving anything related to al Qaeda operating in Yemen or Nigeria was fair game and that we'd declassify it if necessary."
The White House, according to the source, is in full defensive spin mode. Other administration sources also say a flurry of memos were generated on December 26th, 27th, and 28th, which developed talking points about how Obama's decision to effectively shut down the Homeland Security Council (it was merged earlier this year into the National Security Council, run by National Security Adviser James Jones) had nothing to do with what Obama called a "catastrophic" failure on Christmas Day.
"This White House doesn't view the Northwest [Airlines] failure as one of national security, it's a political issue," says the White House source. "That's why Axelrod and Emanuel are driving the issue." . . .

Read the whole thing. Disgusting.

UPDATE: "White House to Critics: Stop Blaming Us While We Look For a Way To Blame Bush."

Apaches at the Tea Party

Writing at the American Spectator:

A few weeks ago, I had a long conversation with a liberal journalist who asked me, "Who do you see as the leader of the conservative movement?" I didn't have an answer, but Richard Viguerie is onto something when he emphasizes the "leaderless" quality of the Tea Party grassroots, quoting a historical study of the Apaches: "You wanted to follow Geronimo? You followed Geronimo. You didn't want to follow him? Then you didn't. The power lay with each individual." . . .

Read the rest at the Spectator, and also read Viguerie's thought-provoking article at the American Thinker.

The lameness of Adam Lambert

Let's face it, he's boring -- which my latest column at The American Spectator is certainly not:

At some point, reasonable people might expect an end to these épater les bourgeoisie gestures, as the bourgeoisie have long since ceased to be shocked by such routine public exhibitions. . . .
More than four decades have gone by since Philip Larkin poetically joked about sex having been invented in 1963, "Between the end of the Chatterley ban/And the Beatles' first LP." Nevertheless, there stubbornly persists within the self-styled "artistic community" the assumption that middle-class Americans are a bunch of repressed puritanical hypocrites badly in need of the liberating influence that only pelvic thrusts, gay kissing and the choreographed simulation of sadomasochism can provide. . . .

Read the whole thing.

(Cross-posted at Right Wing News.)

Mrs. Other McCain rocks D.C.!

Over at the American Spectator, I've posted photos of various bigwigs -- John Fund, Jeri Thompson, Roger Scruton, etc. -- having fun at the annual gala, but the No. 1 celebrity at last night's soiree was Mrs. Other McCain:

Mrs. Other McCain and I with Hannah Giles and Matthew Vadum. I'll post more photos after a while, but first I've got to upload them to Facebook.

No backing down

From my American Spectator article today:

Even while the Hoffman campaign's early-evening "cautious optimism" gave way to concern -- with staffers huddling in the "war room" here at the Hotel Saranac -- one official of New York's Conservative Party was already in a celebratory mood, laughing as he yelled into his cell phone: "Guess who will not be representing the 23rd District? Dede Scozzafava!"
The liberal Republican Scozzafava suspended her campaign four days before Election Day, but still got about 7,000 votes -- a number greater than the margin of victory for the Democrat she endorsed, Bill Owens. Her defeat was victory enough for some conservatives, on a night when the GOP swept the off-off-year gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey. And the candidate who drove Scozzafava out of the race struck a defiant tone in conceding his narrow loss to Owens.
"This one was worth the fight . . . And this is only one fight in the battle," said Hoffman . . .

Read the rest. Also read Michelle Malkin's post about her determination to keep fighting.

Like I said, "This isn't over."

NY23: 'Revolution'

At the American Spectator:

Doug Hoffman campaign spokesman Rob Ryan just said the off-year congressional election in this sprawling upstate district represents a political "revolution."
"People have just stepped up to the plate," Ryan said, describing the surge of grassroots volunteer support for Hoffamn. "They're sick and tired of politics as usual. They're sick and tired of the culture of corruption in Washington. They're sick and tired of sending all their money to the IRS." . . .

Read the rest.

UPDATE: Drew M. of Ace of Spades HQ is in town! Somebody tell him to find me at the hotel restaurant. We'll have a mini-Ace-o-Palooza.