The Week in Review

WEEK'S END

The fellow at the next desk quips that, at this rate, Sarah Palin will win the 2012 presidential nomination by default, because all the Republican men have girlfriends . . . .Unless, of course, it turns out that she does, too.

On Thursday a bunch of folks -- including some from Richmond -- rallied in D.C. to demand government health care. Noticeably absent from news coverage of the event was the insinuation, frequently leveled at April's Tax Day Tea Parties, that the whole supposedly grassroots shebang was mere agitprop whipped up by powerful interests in Washington.

. . . And yet the headquarters of Health Care for America Now! (HCAN) are located on K Street in Washington, D.C. -- ground zero for big-bucks lobbying in the nation's capital.

A look at the groups forming HCAN's coalition is instructive, too. It's a veritable rogue's gallery of powerful left-wing interest groups: the AFL-CIO, MoveOn.org, the NEA, the National Council of La Raza, Planned Parenthood, the UAW -- and, of course, ACORN (or whatever it's calling itself today).

An environmentalist praising Gov. Tim Kaine's new program to monitor pollution from older power plants says, "Pollution that's emitted in Virginia largely stays in Virginia." Which is more than one can say for our peripatetic governor.

This week's Towering Chutzpah Award goes to Massachusetts Rep. Barnie Frank, for sending (please sit down for this) a letter to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac asking them to relax their lending rules for condos. It's like someone standing in the wreckage of Chernobyl asking, "Control rods? Why do we need so many darn control rods?!"