The Daily Dose

If the U.S. attorney scandal has left you confused, you're not alone. The reason, as David Freddoso ably explains, is that while some of the firings seem to be legitimate (as in Carol Lam's failure to pursue administration priorities), others were seemingly intended to roadblock investigations into Republicans (as was the case with Paul Charlton, John McKay and David Iglesias). (Related: Charles Krauthammer explains why this "unnecessary scandal" is Gonzales's fault, and Dahlia Lithwick and Jack Goldsmith explain why the Justice Department will never, and should never, be entirely apolitical.)

Politicians uniformly speak of an energy crisis. We're "addicted to oil," declared President Bush in his 2004 SOTU address. His possible successors would bathe in ethanol if it would win them the Iowa caucuses. The solution, however, outlined by Heritage's Michael Frank, is to increase domestic supply by reducing regulatory bans and burdens. (If you think we're running out of oil, click here.)

Good news for the globe-trotting, liberty-dispensing Tom Palmer: as Christopher Hitchens reports, the soon-to-open American University of Iraq will offer not only an M.B.A. course but also, in the words of Azzam Alwash, one of its directors, "the ideas of Locke, the ideas and writings of Paine and Madison."

One big reason Democrats won November's midterms was because they recruited Blue Dog candidates. Or did they? According to the Capitol Briefing blog (as summarized in the Weekly Standard), through the first seven weeks of the 110th Congress, out of almost 4,000 total votes cast by the 42 new House Dems, a mere 20 were against positions advocated by the Democratic caucus' leadership. Only 14 of the 42 had cast even one roll call vote deviating from the party line. Pat Toomey drives home the point: "The Club for Growth PAC is targeting these freshmen in the hope that they will live up to their word and put American taxpayers ahead of the Democratic Party leadership."