Karl's Weekend Reading

Surrender at the Wall Street Journal's editorial board! Or, at least that is what we thought when reading Thursday's "McCain's Apostasies". The board suggests McCain is just a reassurance or two away from mending disagreements with the conservative base. To be followed by a rally of the base in November. Well, if you haven't heard, McCain was a POW, and he supported the surge. He and the Journal editorial board also agreed on immigration reform. (There may have been one or two others that thought amnesty was a good idea too...) Not an endorsement by the WSJ, but if it smells like one...

Mr. McCain could heal some of the wounds merely by acknowledging the obvious, which is that McCain-Feingold has had unintended consequences...
On taxes, too, the Arizonan still has reassuring work to do.
Mr. McCain has already moved to accommodate his many critics on immigration...

Bret Stephens at the WSJ presents the new threat from Gaza - to neighbor Egypt. As always, a thorough analysis in his "The Gaza Breakout":

As Middle Eastern power plays go, Hamas's decision to dismantle the Gaza-Sinai border was a masterstroke. Gaza's economic woes are almost wholly self-inflicted, but they are real. Dynamiting and bulldozing the border of a neighboring country is legally an act of war, but it was made to seem like a humanitarian necessity and a bid for freedom. Flooding that neighbor with hundreds of thousands of desperate people is a massive economic burden on Egypt, but one that it shirks at its political peril.

Another "Where's the Outrage" piece, this time from an Obama supporter writing in the WSJ, "Hillary's Smear Campaign". So Obama's legal work for Tony Rezko (slumlord) amounted to 5 hours, compared to Hillary's 60 hours for Whitewater. Yet he is tarnished.

Mrs. Clinton's willingness to ignore the truth for short-term political advantage is exactly what breeds the partisanship that's paralyzed Washington for too many years, and the cynicism felt by so many Americans, especially the young. Getting ahead by any means possible is the strategy. Once elected, the candidate falsely believes that he or she will be able to set things right and govern differently. All that was said in the campaign is rationalized -- it will be forgiven and forgotten as part of the hyperbole of the election process.

Sadly, it just isn't so. No one forgets and no one forgives in Washington.

How you get elected defines who you will be once in power.

Tony Rezko is the one in the middle:

Last, leases of oil and gas will be up for sale on February 6 for drilling in Alaska's Chukchi Sea, 25-200 miles offshore. But, this can be stopped if the concerned global warming types can get the polar bear on the endangered species list. The WSJ explains the specifics in "The Polar Bear Express", and concludes this may be more about politics.