http://www.foxnews.com/…

House Democrats responded to President’s Bush’s call for Congress to lift the moratorium on offshore drilling. This was at an on-camera press conference fed back live.

Among other things, the Democrats called for the government to own refineries so it could better control the flow of the oil supply.

They also reasserted that the reason the Appropriations Committee markup (where the vote on the amendment to lift the ban) was cancelled so they could focus on preparing the supplemental Iraq spending bill for tomorrow.

At an off-camera briefing, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) said the same. And a senior Republican House Appropriations Committee aide adds that “there were multiple reasons for the postponement” including discussion on the supplemental. But the aide said there was the thought that Democrats may wish to avoid a debate today on energy amendments.

Here are the highlights from briefing

Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY), member of the House Appropriations Committee and one of the most-ardent opponents of off-shore drilling

We (the government) should own the refineries. Then we can control how much gets out into the market.

Oh boy. I don’t see this going anywhere but if people are pinched hard enough at the pump they may actually let it happen. Someone recently was telling me how they could see a New Deal part II coming from this current mess. I’m afraid to agree.

http://abcnews.go.com/…

A half-dozen police officers kicked and beat three men pulled from a car during a traffic stop as a TV helicopter taped the confrontation.The video, shot by WTXF-TV, shows three police cars stopping a car Monday, two days after a city officer was shot to death responding to a bank robbery.

The tape shows about a dozen officers gathering around the vehicle. About a half-dozen officers hold two of the men on the ground. Both are kicked repeatedly, while one is seen being punched; one also appears to be struck with a baton.

The third man is also kicked and ends up on the ground.

“On the surface it certainly does not look good in terms of the amount of force that was used,” Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey said. “But we don’t want to rush to judgment.”

No need to rush to judgment… seems to me all the evidence necessary is right here. Five of these officers are off the street now… just not in a jail where they belong.

http://emac.blogs.foxbusiness.com/…

Time to listen to Texas Congressman Ron Paul, the lone voice of reason in Congress today who’s got to feel like he’s shouting into a field of cotton with his repeated warnings about the dangers of a collapsing dollar, while the administration goes AWOL on the problem.

The dollar just hit a record intraday low against the euro on reports that consumer confidence levels have dropped to levels not seen since the post-Watergate era. It is down 7% year to date against the Chinese renminbi, it’s weaker than the Japanese yen and the Canadian loonie.

The joke is the greenback is now only stronger than the Mexican pesos and the Zimbabwe dollar, an overstatement for dramatic effect, to be sure.But since hitting a peak in 2002, the dollar has lost about a quarter of its value against a trade weighted basket of currencies.

A weak dollar acts as an anvil around the neck of the US economy and consumers. Rising inflation is essentially a tax on consumers, so are rising energy prices, and that double whammy threatens to undermine the purchasing power of the rebate checks due out in May–backed by printing even more dollars.

A bellwether event of significant import to our nation’s finances happened this past January 1 with little notice. That’s the day the first baby boomer was allowed to retire. A new federal report wearily warns once again for the umpteenth time that the nation faces some $60t in Social Security and Medicare unfunded liabilities alone.

We’ve heard time and again conservatives say deficits don’t matter. To say that deficits don’t matter is like saying ketchup is a vegetable or trees cause pollution.

This article is almost too positive. If she’s so in agreement with Paul’s economic position or at least parts of it then why haven’t I seen more of him on her programs?

Just wow.

• Fred Thompson was really on fire tonight. Maybe a bit too much in fact. I hope that this splits the pro-war neocon vote more. He went after Huckabee which I think was the right thing to do. Both because he’s high in the polls but also because besides Rudy he’s the most liberal and is easy to attack.
• Huckabee I think did the worst of the bunch. Not terrible but I think he got beat up a bit because of his record and I think he deserves it. The religious question about the ad though could have been left out. I don’t think those that support him care much.
• McCain keeps getting more and more smug. It upsets me he was my Republican choice in 2000. A coworker said the same. He wasn’t particularly good or bad tonight but his smartass smirk and chuckle gets to me more and more. I don’t know how his donations are going but I hope he’s tight on money. It’ll be interesting to see this 3-4 man race go while they all are running out of cash.
• Romney… nothing to really mention. His pot shot at Paul about reading Ahmadinejad’s press releases was retarded. It was great however to see Paul respond: “Laugh it up”, “Keep laughing” or whatever it was.
• Rudy didn’t do much either tonight except laugh at Paul… again.
• Paul had some real spunk. Must be carrying over from the CNN interview earlier in the day about the newsletters. The other day after the results in NH someone made up a list of suggestions for the Paul campaign (and today he asked for suggestions.) One was to take off the gloves. The feel good policy ads in NH and Iowa didn’t appear to be worth the millions we spent on them. He needs to start pointing out how his opponents are wrong. Hold the voters hand a bit. It appears that suggestion was taken and I hope it continues. He needs to be careful not to come off as the grumpy old man (which may have already happened) but he needs to be firm and forward. Like when asked about 9/11 truthers again. The person asking the question said that many of Paul’s supporters where truthers. At least that’s what I recall. And that’s absolute bullshit and was done to further discredit him. I would have liked Paul to point that out but I thought his answer which amounted to: No I don’t agree with that, no I don’t endorse that, and while I can’t tell them what to do given that that association doesn’t help him that they not speak in his name. And immediately after saying that he asked to address the latest issue with Iran. Now Brit Hume seemed to be fishing for the answer that the captain of the ship acted incorrectly. That he was too passive. It felt like he was assuming it was self evident that the passive response was wrong and that the candidates were going to go all warmonger on the stage and call for the heads of the captains and the bombing of the Iranians. None of the candidates took the bate. Paul fully recognized what Hume was implying and correctly went off on the warmonger neocons who are looking for anything to start another war. He should have been more explicit in pointing out what Hume was implying but he was right on the mark. The panel very quickly realizes and tries to make Paul to be a paranoid fool by pointing out that the rest of the candidates were calm and had agreed with the passive response. Of course that’s not what Paul was referring too but much of the crowd fell for it anyway.
• Frank Luntz was Frank Luntz. “An idiot.” He had his regular group of undecided voters. He’s very good at apparently manipulating the crowd. Who thinks Thompson won? Oh yeah yeah he won. Who think Paul did the worst? Oh yeah he did the worst. I was very happy to see that not all of them raised their hands and even shook their heads no when he asked if Paul lost the debate and at the end when he asked if Paul should be allowed in the Republican debates just about everyone said yes and you could tell Luntz wasn’t exactly expecting that and passed it off to Hannity & Colmes without commenting on it.
• Oddly Paul was not interviewed afterwards like the rest of them. I’d like to know why and hope it was because of Paul and not Fox ignoring him. (Update: He had something else to do and declined.)
• By the time I shut off the TV Paul was winning the cell phone poll at 32% with Thompson at 21%. Text R4 to 36288.

UPDATE:

The NYTimes “Live Blogging the G.O.P. Debate“:

9:36 p.m. | Paul and Iraq Ron Paul does not seem to like being asked about the view of many of his supporters, that 9/11 was an inside job. He says he can’t tell his supporters what to do. In so doing, he passes up a chance to guide or lead them.

What a bunch of bullshit. Paul doesn’t want to lead them. He doesn’t agree with them, he would prefer them not associate him with those beliefs, but he’s not going to tell them to bugger off. He’s not going to tell them to change their opinion. These pundits simply don’t get it. They don’t see that this question has nothing to do with Paul. They don’t see or they agree with the implications in the question. As if these hundreds of thousands of supporters are all truthers. Then you have:

Mr. Paul goes on a tear, suggesting his rivals want to start World War III over Iran. Brit Hume, one of the moderators, points out that all of the rivals have said they would react passively, to which Mr. Paul replies, “I’m very sorry, I can’t hear a word you said.” Mr. Romney takes a slap at Mr. Paul, drawing boos from the audience.

Brit Hume is retarded and didn’t actually listen to the candidates answers. Nor did this blogger. They all said clearly: “No, I think the captain did the right thing, but if they mess with us again we’ll make them see their god real quick.” In some cases they were more aggressive than that. Paul was pointing out that they are making a mountain out of a mole hill. The administration and Fox News especially. I would have preferred Paul to say: “Well, if they make an aggressive move against the United States than absolutely we would retaliate. However, in this case, I do not believe any true threat was posed and to get all worked up over a half dozen speed boats is silly. I’m getting the impression from the administration that they are just looking for a reason to start something with Iran.”

And as for who was being booed. Romney was definitely the one being booed after making the remark about Ahmadinejad.

I have to say that many of the comments are entertainingly ignorant. This is the typical NYT reader?

UPDATE2:

You can find what appears to be the whole debate here.