Sanford planned to return to work Wednesday after a six-day absence from South Carolina, during which time his staff said he'd been hiking along the Appalachian Trail.

That information proved incorrect. Sanford emerged at the Atlanta airport Wednesday morning, telling a reporter for The State newspaper that he had traveled to Buenos Aires, Argentina, instead. Sanford said he had told his staff before leaving that he might go on the U.S. hike.

 What happened in his absence? Did S.C. burn to the ground? Was there some major catastrophe that demanded his presence?

Nope.

Then why is this news?

“If you invest in our children, you’ll be proud 20 years from now,” Bernhard told the Senate Finance Committee.

Throw in Lee Greenwood singing "proud to be an American" as the background music for Bernhard's little speech, and you have a helluva campaign ad.

President Barack Obama will announce today that automakers must meet average U.S. fuel-economy standards of 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016, four years sooner than previously planned, a senior administration official said.

The plan adopts nationwide a standard proposed by California, setting the first-ever U.S. limit on greenhouse-gas pollution from vehicles.

I've long speculated that Obama would govern much like  former president Jimmy Carter. And so it is coming to pass. 

On a philisophical level, it's just plain un-American.

On a practical level, it's disastrous for him politically, and disastrous for the American people. 

Oh yeah, Rush Limbaugh will get his wish: Obama's policies will fail, and it will be excruciatingly painful.  From now until 2012, life in America is going to be like one long, slow root canal without anesthesia.

Like Carter, President Obama is dickering around with energy policy.  

This via Reason:

All rhetoric aside, mandates cost money. Today, for example, President Barack Obama declared that new U.S. automobiles must get an average of 35 miles-per-gallon by the year 2016. Yet it is widely acknowledged that meeting this new standard will add $1,300 to the cost of each new car. In general, when prices go up, people buy less. So, all other things being equal, less demand for a product (like cars) means fewer jobs, not more. (Of course, there is one way to raise prices and create more jobs: reduce worker productivity. If policy makers deliberately encourage inefficiency in an industry, more jobs will likely follow. But that reduced productivity also means workers will receive lower wages.)

I would rather have seen Obama become a capitalist than fail, because his failure is gonna hurt  (and that's putting it mildly).

We're screwed.

This is bad, but very instructive. This single video ecapsulates why I no longer listen to talk radio, or watch ANY television news (FOX news network included).

Brother Hannity recently did a segment on Janeane Garofalo, which featured footage of a snippy Garofalo standing by her comments about tea party goers. She said he stood by her comments about the folks at the tea parties being racist.

Her allegations of racism are wrong, and that's the part that Hannity and his guest talk about.

There's another part of Garofalo's little tirade that Hannity and co. ignored. In the segment, Garofalo launched some pretty damaging observations. She said:

"Where were these people calling for fiscal prudence for the last eight years?"

There's no good answer for that- Hannity doesn't give one.

"Barry Goldwater was conservative."

It was U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater who called REPUBLICAN president Eisenhower a "dime store New Dealer." You didn't hear anyone talking that way about President Bush. Why? Because the Bush admin managed to keep the national debate centered on foreign policy, while limited government took a back seat (that's putting it politely).

"The conservative party hasn't been conservative since 1980." 

No good argument against that: Hannity doesn't try to give one.

I believe the tea party movement has potential. But they need to understand that the G.O.P. has given people like Garofalo the rope with which to hang them, and they are putting that rope to good use.

The tea party folks can take away that rope by targeting  Republicans, as well a Democrats,   who grow government.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said Saturday that it's time for the Republican Party to give up its "nostalgia" for the heyday of the Reagan era and look forward, even if it means stealing the winning strategy deployed by Democrats in the 2008 election.

"You can't beat something with nothing, and the other side has something. I don't like it, but they have it, and we have to be respectful and mindful of that," Mr. Bush said.

Jeb is wrong of course.

The conservative elites in talk radio are correct that the G.O.P. should fashion their principles upon what Reagan would do.

But do they understand Reagan?

Consider Reagan's doctrine of "peace through strength?" This video documentary of Reagan raises some questions.  Reagan was all about diplomacy, and he was scoffed at for believing that it would work.

One person interviewed noted how negotiations with the soviets were considered "a joke." 

 Contrast this with rhetoric in a 2006 article by Mark Levin: 

The U.S. response to Hezbollah, an arm of the Iranian military, demonstrates a lack of will to confront militarily Iran. The U.S. has now bought into the elusion — urged by the U.N., Europe, and domestic liberals — that diplomacy will somehow contain the Iranian regime. This is a fundamental and fatal shift by the administration. For all the talk in support of the Bush Doctrine and preemption, the administration has effectively rejected them. And the Democracy Project is not possible if the will to first destroy the enemy is not backed up by military action intended to defeat the enemy.

And Angel subsequently stopped the act to lambast the Internet gossip king, telling the crowd, "I have to recognize someone special here in the house. Perez Hilton, please stand up. We have the world's biggest douchebag [bleep] in the house!"