Tucker Carlson on what the GOP needs to do to regain the majority:

Finally, after the party has settled on what it believes, it ought to go shopping for a leader. I recommend someone who speaks fluent English. This matters, it turns out, and not just for aesthetic reasons. In a democracy, eloquence is a basic condition of leadership. A president has a moral as well as a political obligation to explain his program. His constitutional powers are limited to just a few (war, the veto). His real authority comes from persuasion.

It helps if you can talk.

From Salon:

On Jan. 20, 1993, the day Bill Clinton was inaugurated, the Dow Jones Industrial Average stood at 3,241, the national debt was 4 trillion, and the unemployment rate was 7.3 percent. After eight years of Clintonomics, on Jan. 20, 2001, when George Bush took office, the Dow had reached 10,588, the national debt was 5.7 trillion, and the unemployment rate was 4.2 percent.

Today, the Dow closed at 10,482, the unemployment rate is 6.1 percent (and possibly higher tomorrow), and the national debt, this very week, crossed $10 trillion.

I love that the economist in George Will’s parable about free markets (or at least the parable that he is quoting from someone else) is a woman. How very modern of him.  Though it kind of has me picturing Adam Smith’s “Invisible Hand” as Cinderella’s Fairy Godmother. Doesn’t this sort of look like “spontaneous emergence of social cooperation”?:

Maybe W was on to something.

(Did Cheney not give him the wand?)

The National Women’s Law Center is alerting supporters to the new HHS proposal that could further limit women’s access to health care.

The Bush Administration’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently released a proposed rule that would undermine patient’s access to vital health services and information by greatly expanding existing laws intended to govern the right to refuse to provide abortion care.

By failing to provide a definition of abortion consistent with accepted medical standards, the proposed rule leaves the door open for doctors, nurses, insurance plans, hospitals, and nearly any other employee in a health care setting to deny access to most forms of birth control. In addition, the proposed rule reaches even further than birth control and abortion: it expands the scope and reach of existing law to limit information on and access to the entire range of health care services — including treatment of infertility, depression, drug addiction, HIV/AIDS, and more.

Their suggested “protest” email:

I am writing in opposition to the regulations that the Department of Health and Human Services proposed on August 26, 2008, that allows patients to be denied health services and information based on the moral beliefs of their provider.

This rule creates problems where none now exist.  It disregards the needs of patients, even in medical emergencies, and causes confusion about laws already on the books that protect the religious beliefs of all employees, including health care providers, while allowing employers to ensure that patients get access to vital health care services and information.  I seriously urge you to reconsider this dangerous regulation.

And in the meantime, keep rules like this in mind when you’re shopping for a doctor.  A simple question like “does he/she prescribe the morning after pill?” before you make your first appointment could save you LOTS of trouble down the road.