One would expect that with today’s gasoline prices, the recent discoveries of massive oil reserves in the Bakken Shale region of North Dakota, USA, would be met with soaring optimism about America’s struggle for energy independence. Geologists have discovered oil reserves that may amount to more than one hundred billion barrels of oil; it is probably the largest discovery of oil in the history of the United States. Consider that Saudi Arabia, which has the largest oil reserves in the world, has only 264 billion in proven reserves. In years gone by, such a discovery would have been major sustained news for months in the United States. Industries would be ignited, fortunes made. Large groups ...

Not unlike their counterparts in Anbar -- and now Baghdad -- the Dems are staggering around the ring. Joe Louis has just hit them square on the chin. They are flat footed, dizzy; their eyes move in and out of focus. As the fog of war clears, the fog of politics emerges, and at precisely the wrong time. And so they squint, trying to see their adversary, searching for some piece of flesh to swing at. A flailing jab. A wild punch into to the air. Everywhere: impotence. Their inside dialog: Breathe. This guy wasn't supposed to be able to do this. Push up your knees. I'm OK. Settle down. I'm the champion, right? I need to sit down.  Put up your hands; protect. ...

Gene Wojciechowski over at ESPN magazine has a great story here about some "Go Big Red" Rascals in Nebraska who laid down what they love the most -- college football -- for our injured troops in Virginia. The Hound has often heard how the Cornhusker faithful are the greatest fans in College sports. Now I am persuaded. THE HOUND

There is an old saying in the law: If you have the facts, argue the facts. If you have the law, argue the law. If you have neither the law nor the facts, obfuscate. One thing we can be sure of, Dick Durbin, Charles Schumer, and Nancy Pelosi, were paying attention in law school. Faced with the reality of progress in Iraq the Democrat leadership is on the move -- before the Petraeus report has even hit Capitol Hill -- doing their best to confuse the matter. The primary complaint is that General Petraeus -- the General who actually runs the Surge on the ground in Iraq -- actually talked with the staff of the Commander in Chief of the ...

While the President of the Earth was making the free publicity rounds on network TV to promote his movie, Gore, in a fit of "I-can-get-away-with-saying-anything-on-Charlie-Rose" hubris, reassured Americans that while there were a few scientists that didn't agree with him on his global warming claims, they were on par with "holocaust deniers." Uh huh. Unless the world history academy has recently been overrun by morons while I wasn't paying attention, Gore might want to check his data. A recent survey being discussed on Sen. Inhofe's press blog reports that in fact, more than one-half of all scientists that have published academic articles on the subject reject Gore's view. In the end, you either have to conclude that Gore does not really care what the scientific community actually ...

Have you noticed? For some unknown reason, the greatest military authority in American history has stopped sharing his wisdom with us. Where have you gone, Chuck Hagel? Here is what Senator Sanctimony said, not so very long ago, in the Washington Post: "There will be no victory or defeat for the United States in Iraq. . ." Uh, huh. "The time for more U.S. troops in Iraq has passed. We do not have more troops to send and, even if we did, they would not bring a resolution to Iraq. . ." Yeah, that is just what I was thinking as well. "The United States must begin planning for a phased troop withdrawal from Iraq. . . .It is not too late. The United States can ...

We wake up this morning to reports of a foiled terror attack in London. Word is that the bomb that London police diffused is similar in construction to bombs wired to explode in Baghdad.   Rest assured, Rascals. "There is no global war on terror." Senator Edwards, our next commander in chief has told us so. Several times. In 1993, al-Qaeda member Ramzi Yousef used a truck bomb to attack the World Trade Center in New York City. The attack killed six people, injured 1,042, and caused nearly $300 million in property damage. Yousef was later captured in Pakistan.  On June 25, 1996, members of Hizballah exploded a fuel truck adjacent to the Khobar Towers, military housing in Saudi ...

Al Gore is a man of big ideas. Just ask him. Earth is "in the balance." The internal combustion engine is the "greatest enemy of mankind."  Today's political climate is "an assault on Reason." And so on. We all knew guys like this in college; now we duck them in the office. Guys who speak in paragraphs. Long, boring paragraphs. Al Gore is so tiresome he could put coffee to sleep. Today our self-appointed Earthwise Evangelist issued an altar call to the true believers: Step out of the aisle, come to the front, and take a 7 point pledge to the Earth.  The 7 points are primarily political: pressure your government to do this, pressure your government to do that. And, by the way, work to reduce your emissions or pay for carbon offsets. Repent of your sin, ...

Pardon the Hound for the presumption that when two units of the Nebraska National Guard, the 1-167th Cav and the 134th Infantry, returned from 15 months of service to freedom, Nebraska's most famous war veteran Chuck Hagel would be on hand, thanking our troops for service to their great nation. Brothers in arms, one would think. After all, as we say out west -- that's in Western Nebraska, Chuck -- one couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting a politician. Governor Heineman came; Mayor Beutler of Lincoln; Congressmen Fortenberry; shoot, even Adrian Smith from the 3rd District showed up to thank the troops. Ben Nelson and his great hair gave them their due. Word has it that sweet old ...

We are all now very familiar with the latest installment of obvious idiocy of Rosie O'Donnell. Here it is, if you somehow missed it: Okay, so Rosie is not exactly Susan B. Anthony. As Marshall McLuhan once said, "moral indignation is a standard strategy for endowing the idiot with dignity." But lost in the controversy of her screaming match with Elisabeth Hasselbeck is a statement that reveals a good deal about the loony Left's mindset about the war. Rosie actually believes that American soldiers have killed 655,000 innocent Iraqi civilians since the start of the war. The invasion of Iraq began on March 19, 2003. That is 1531 days ago. If Rosie is right, the American military has itself killed about 2% of Iraq's total population in about 4 years, murdering an average of 425 innocent Iraq civilians every single day. This is lunacy, of course. The most reasonable estimates are that between 70K and 76K Iraqi civilians have been killed during the war, not 650,000, and there is no good reason to attribute any significant fraction of those numbers to American military forces. Imbedded reporters have confirmed the great care that American soldiers take to minimize non-combatant casualties, and it is well accepted that most of the civilian casualties are the product of terrorists and the so-called "insurgents." But friends, I must say that I am beginning to understand our opposition.