“Bush Administration” on The Daily Caller

Now that this year’s federal budget has been worked out, biofuels policy will move its way back up the agenda in the 112th Congress. Late in 2010, biofuels policy briefly became a marquee topic when none other than Al Gore opined that “it is not a good policy to have these massive subsidies for first-generation ethanol,” referring to a whole suite of subsidies and mandates for corn-based ethanol. History will note the first statute to mandate the use of ethanol as an additive to certain reformulated gasoline blends passed the U.S. Senate in 1994 by then-Vice President Gore’s tie-breaking vote. (more)

Mitch Daniels is cheap. (more)

The unrest in the Middle East has shaken energy markets around the world. Consumers are bracing for a sharp rise in already sky-high gas prices. But they’d be wrong to worry too much. That’s because it’s not the supply of oil that determines the price of gasoline, but rather a simple mathematical formula unrelated to crude. All you have to do is take the length (in years) of the incumbent administration, and divide it by the number of “oil men” in power. Express your answer in terms of dollars per gallon. (more)

That’s a political man-bites-dog headline. The issue being debated is the proposed U.S.-Korean Fair Trade Agreement (KORUS FTA) — actually it’s a managed trade deal, detailed in over a thousand pages of fine print. The leviathan arrangement is filled with favors, exceptions, obligations, and restrictions and micro-manages commerce from cows to cars — sweetheart transactions for Wall Street elites and multi-national corporations. (more)

A 2006 law that requires the U.S. Justice Department to deploy a high-tech system for catching child pornographers has identified hundreds of thousands of criminal suspects — and collected extensive evidence pointing to the locations of their child victims. (more)

1.) How the left astroturfed net neutrality into existence — Despite what you may have heard, yesterday’s net neutrality vote at the FCC wasn’t the result of millions of Americans or even tens of thousands of Americans waking up and saying, “I think I am going to suddenly care about this!” No, like most Washington success stories, yesterday’s enslavement of the Internet was made possible by a small group of people with a lot of money. “After McCain-Feingold passed, several of the foundations involved in the effort began shifting their attention to “media reform”—a movement to impose government controls on Internet companies somewhat related to the long-defunct “Fairness Doctrine” that used to regulate TV and radio companies,” writes the WSJ’s John Fund. Those outfits are Pew Charitable Trusts, Bill Moyers’s Schumann Center for Media and Democracy, the Joyce Foundation, George Soros’s Open Society Institute, the Ford Foundation, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, all of which have given money to left-wing froth factory Free Press. As a result of Free Press’s close ties to staffers for FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, net neutrality crusaders gamed the debate from the beginning: “Some of the same foundations that have spent years funding net neutrality advocacy research ended up funding the FCC-commissioned study that evaluated net neutrality research.” (more)

Sometimes appearances can be deceiving. This is no more obvious than when assessing Mitch Daniels. The popular governor of Indiana may be short on hair and height, but he could well be the hero conservatives and Tea Partiers have been searching for. (more)

Why do foreign policy insiders and political analysts incessantly refer to Kim Jong-il as irrational? He epitomizes the phrase “rogue dictator,” but that provides no insight into the man’s mental stability. If anything, he behaves perfectly rationally — he acts as a petulant child that has never been disciplined for behaving badly. The West has already cut off much of Pyongyang’s aid, so Kim has literally nothing to lose. He has a country on the brink of famine and economic collapse yet shows no sign of ingratiating North Korea to the international community. The question isn’t why Kim comports himself this way, it’s why shouldn’t he? (more)

This week, President Obama and Republican negotiators announced a deal that will extend all of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts for two years while also extending unemployment benefits for 13 months, preventing the estate tax from being fully reinstated and cutting payroll taxes for a year. As I’ve been saying all year, no American should face a tax increase in this economic environment. Our top priority must be preventing a tax hike on any American. (more)

A de-classified summary of a report about detainees formerly held at Guantanamo Bay, written by the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, reported that of the 66 former Guantanamo detainees transferred since President Obama took office, “2 are confirmed and 3 are suspected of reengaging in terrorist or insurgent activities.” (more)

Unconfirmed reports of a secret side agreement to the New START nuclear arms treaty started circulating in mid-October. The side agreement supposedly restricts the U.S.’s ability to pursue a robust missile defense. (more)

Washington and Cairo are locked in a war of words over whether or not the government of Egypt will allow international observers to monitor the country’s parliamentary elections this Sunday. The U.S. State Department has fanned the flames of the controversy by demanding international observers. (more)

According to North Korean official statements, the Korean Peninsula is tottering on the precipice of disaster — yet again. Having just attacked a South Korean island, killing two military personnel and two civilians, Pyongyang has reverted to its incendiary form by declaring that South Korea is driving it “to the brink of war.” Such virulent threats would have more ferocity if they were not issued with such regularity. (more)

In some struggling school districts around the country, students transferring from failing schools are overwhelming the few successful schools in their areas, an unintended byproduct of the No Child Left Behind law. (more)

Just last week, the Transportation Security Administration had an 80 percent approval rating. Then, after a few days of media scrutiny, its numbers began to crash. As The Daily Caller noted yesterday, the number of Americans who approve of the TSA dropped 16 points in a single week, and is still plummeting. (more)

The Republican Party is resurgent. But the last two periods of GOP dominance ended in political disaster. Unless Republicans promote real change — namely limited, constitutional government — they are likely to be sent back to political oblivion again. And deservedly so. (more)

In the face of international opprobrium, Iran and North Korea march relentlessly towards joining the small club of nations capable of deploying and selling nuclear weapons. If allowed to succeed, their new status would irrevocably alter the global balance of power as we know it. (more)

The Daily Caller has learned that the author behind the recent report from the Department of Justice that targeted five former U.S. attorneys for excessive travel expenses has had, according to our sources, a troubled history in the DOJ and attempted in the past to use her position to smear conservatives. (more)

Fair Game will be responsible for more theater evacuations than a fire alarm. Expanding to theaters nationwide on Friday, director Doug Liman’s ode to former CIA agent Valerie Plame, who claimed in 2003 that Bush administration officials had leaked her name and undercover status to the press in response to her husband Joe Wilson’s debunking part of their case for the Iraq War, is more interested in rewriting than in retelling history. (more)

A plan to cut the federal deficit and reduce the debt that was released Wednesday by the co-chairs of President Obama’s debt commission was blasted by the left, with labor unions leading the way in decrying its cuts, and received only a noncommittal response from the White House. (more)