What an honor to have milblogger Michael Yon on Pundit Review Radio this Sunday evening at 9pm EST. He will be joining us live from Mosul, Iraq.

You can stream the show live at WRKO and you can call us toll-free with questions at 877-469-4322.

Have you been reading Michael’s dispatches from Iraq?

You should be. Michael Yon is a former Special Forces soldier who is now over in Iraq, on his own dime, as a journalist. He is living in Mosul and doing some of the most amazing reporting of anyone covering the war. As milblogger Blackfive told us recently on Pundit Review Radio, Michael’s reporting brings the good, the bad and the ugly, as it is happening.

Check our post on Michael titled Revaluing The Yon

Please check out us out Sunday evening to get a unique, first person perspective as to what is really going on in Iraq.

About Pundit Review Radio
Pundit Review Radio is where the old media meets the new. We give voice to the new media. Each week we highlight the work of the most influencial bloggers and citizen journalists on Boston’s largest talk station, WRKO. Recent guests have included Jeff Jarvis of Buzz Machine, Don Luskin of PoorandStupid, James Taranto, Hugh Hewitt, Scott Johnson from Powerline, LaShawn Barber, Patterico, Blackfive and Matt Margolis from Blogs for Bush. Let your readers know about our show and check us out!

When it comes to Chelsea Clinton, it was hands off for the New York Slimes,

New York Slimes, December 3, 2000

From the beginning, Bill and Hillary Clinton made it clear that they wanted their only child to enjoy as normal an upbringing as possible. And to an extraordinary degree, journalists and the general public conformed with their wishes.

For years, this peculiar arrangement made sense. When her father took office, Chelsea was 12 years old, frizzy-haired, freckled and with a mouthful of braces. She looked vulnerable and was treated accordingly.

When reporters requested interviews with her, or even information about her, says Neel Lattimore, the first lady’s former press secretary, “I had the feeling they were kind of sheepish about it, kind of apologetic, like, ‘My editor asked me to do this, and I know the answer is no.’ “(Which it always was.) Indeed, so solid was the consensus on leaving Chelsea alone that when People magazine published a highly complimentary cover article about how gracefully she seemed to be weathering the impeachment scandal, Geraldo Rivera was among the chorus of indignant voices. “I’m glad it’s their story,” he harrumphed, “not mine.”

The consensus on Chelsea has held for both virtuous and less virtuous reasons. After all, nearly everybody who has kept her secrets found some sort of pride or self-satisfaction in doing so. Washington reporters, for example, are still patting themselves on the back for shielding Chelsea. But they have done so not only out of a decent inclination to protect a young person who never asked to be famous but also out of the sense that self-restraint might earn them something: access to her parents, perhaps.

When it comes to SCOTUS nominee John Roberts, his adopted kids, who are 5 and 4, they are fair game?,

The TIMES has investigative reporter Glen Justice hot on the case to investigate the status of adoption records of Judge Roberts two young children, Josie age 5 and Jack age 4, a top source reveals. Judge Roberts and his wife Jane adopted the children when they each were infants. Both children were adopted from Latin America.

A TIMES insider claims the look into the adoption papers are part of the paper’s “standard background check.”

Previously the WASHINGTON POST Style section had published a story criticizing the outfits Mrs. Roberts had them wear at the announcement ceremony.

One top Washington official with knowledge of the NEW YORK TIMES action
declared: “Trying to pry into the lives of the Roberts? family like this is despicable. Children’s lives should be off limits. The TIMES is putting politics over fundamental decency.? One top Republican official when told of the situation was incredulous. “This can’t possibly be true?”

The vile left should stick with insinuating that Roberts is a closeted gay because he did pro bono work on a case supporting gay rights. I thought liberals are in favor of gay rights? Why don’t they applaud Roberst for this work? Because they can use it to smear him, that’s why. They use it to insinuate that he is gay, in a cheap, tawdry and transparent effort to rile the conservative base. It is the same slimy tactic used by both John Edwards and John Kerry in the past campaign with regard to Dick Cheney’s daughter, who IS gay. At least Roberts is an adult and can defend himself from these vile scum.

Roberts Donated Help To Gay Rights Case

WASHINGTON â?? Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. worked behind the
scenes for gay rights activists, and his legal expertise helped them persuade the Supreme Court to issue a landmark 1996 ruling protecting people from discrimination because of their sexual orientation.

Liberal blog BlueMassGroup,

What to make of this? Is Roberts a clandestine agent of the dreaded
“homosexual agenda“? Is he, in fact, secretly gay? (Perhaps that would explain his son’s controversial pastel clothing?)

I suppose the refreshing thing about this is how unashamed some liberals are about sliming a good and decent man. Indepundit linked to this, a poster named Geso on The Daily Kos, who sure is proud of himself,

That’s my justification for conducting a one man smear campaign on a conservative justice- besides, spreading the rumor that he’s gay wouldn’t piss off anyone I respect, which makes the rumor that much more entertaining.

I need to go take a shower now.

If you follow blogs, you know that Instapundit and Andrew Sullivan have agreed on very little lately. It took the wonderdul people from Pfizer and Bristol Myers to bring them together. Can peace in the middle east be far behind?

Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit
August 2

INSTAWIFE UPDATE: The Insta-Wife saw her cardiologist today, and they did an EKG and downloaded the information from her ICD, which records its own EKG readings whenever her heart rhythms are funny. Turns out there wasn’t much recorded, because her heart rhythms are much, much better. That didn’t surprise me, because she’s been feeling much better, too. That’s not because of the ICD. It will shock her heart out of a dangerous rhythm, or pace it out of one before shocking if it can, which is great, but that’s only after things go wrong. It’s because of the Tikosyn — a powerful and hard-to-prescribe anti-arrhythmic — which is dangerous enough in some people that you have to be hospitalized when you start it, but which has worked wonderfully for her, and without noticeable side effects after the first couple of weeks. The drug has been a godsend for her, and I want to thank the folks at Pfizer for coming up with it. People are always bashing drug companies, but as I’ve written before, they do a lot more to improve people’s lives than most of the critics have ever done, or ever will do.

Glenn Reynolds, MSNBC
August 4

Color me unimpressed with the claims of this critic of the pharmaceutical industry. I’m supposed to be shocked that drug companies use celebrity spokespeople, or that they make drugs to improve the function of people who aren’t deathly ill? That’s not a problem, that’s progress.

The pharmaceutical industry isn’t beyond criticism, of course. But I find most of the criticism rather strained, and all of the critics far too slow to give the industry the credit it deserves for the tremendous good it does.

Andrew Sullivan, Daily Dish
July 1

Got new data this week about my virus. You may recall that I went back on meds
because my viral load, after three years of stability at around 20,000 copies
per mililiter of my blood, went to 60,000 and then 140,000. After ten days of
medication, it came down to 1,500. By now, it should be zero. The drugs are
amazing and I barely notice them at all any more the side effects are so minor.
I guess I should add that these not atypical results show that although basic
scientific research must be funded by government, the “evil” pharmaceutical
companies are, in fact, among the most beneficent organizations in the history
of mankind and their research in the last couple of decades will one day be
recognized as the revolution it truly is. Yes, they’re motivated by profits.
Duh. That’s the genius of capitalism – to harness human improvement to the
always-reliable yoke of human greed. Long may those companies prosper. I owe
them literally my life.

Bolton in Recess Appointment

WASHINGTON â?? By sidestepping the Senate and naming controversial nuclear-arms diplomat John Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations during a congressional recess, President Bush has thrilled the Republican Party’s right while stymieing moderates of both parties holding out for a more conciliatory choice.

The appointment ends nearly five months of political battling and stalemate over a nomination that the president insisted was “the right man at the right time” for the key diplomatic post. By appointing Mr. Bolton, Mr. Bush sends to the UN a longtime stinging critic of the international organization just as the United States is pressing for significant reforms in how the UN works.

Leading Domestic Insurgent Ted Kennedy had this to say in a statement,

The abuse of power and the cloak of secrecy from the White House continues. It’s bad enough that the administration stonewalled the Senate by refusing to disclose documents highly relevant to the Bolton nomination. It’s even worse for the administration to abuse the recess appointment power by making the appointment while Congress is in this five-week recess. It’s a devious maneuver that evades the constitutional requirement of Senate consent and only further darkens the cloud over Mr. Bolton’s credibility at the U.N.

Once again, more over-the-top, fact-free rhetoric from that paragon of virtue, Ted Kennedy. This penchent for partisan flamethrowing often leaves Teddy at odds with his late brother JFK. After all, JFK rightly used recess appointments when he was president,

President John F. Kennedy appointed Thurgood Marshall to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in October 1961, getting around opposition from Southern senators. Their resistance had weakened by the following September, and the Senate approved him 54-16.

So did Bill Clinton, 140 times. Strange, but I couldn’t find a single quote from Teddy denouncing him.

JFK was also wise enough to understand that tax cuts created an environment for economic growth. Teddy screams with all his might that tax cuts are for the rich at the expense of the poor.

W. James Antle of Enter Stage Right reminds us,

While President Kennedy is an icon of modern American liberalism on a par with Franklin D. Roosevelt, he did not always take positions that would endear him with today’s Ben and Jerry-munching left. He was a proponent of increased defense spending and an aggressive anti-communist stance during the Cold War. His friends in the Senate included Joe McCarthy, who he did not vote to censure, and Barry Goldwater. And he proposed what was at the time the biggest tax cut in history.

What was his tax policy? Bruce Bartlett explains,

President Kennedy’s Taxation Task Force… This was a group of outside economists and tax experts recruited by Kennedy aide Theodore Sorenson after the 1960 election. It was this group that first suggested that Kennedy support creation of an Investment Tax Credit, which he did in 1962, and an across the board reduction in tax rates, which he did in 1963. The proposal Kennedy put forward on January 24, 1963 would have cut the top individual income tax rate from 91 percent to 65 percent, and reduced the maximum capital gains tax from 25 percent to 19.5 percent.