Daniel Hannan is awesome.

The speech heard 'round the world! The New York Times is going to be pissed.

News Flash!

For the first time in modern political history, a Democratic politician took responsibility for a misdeed:

Senate Banking committee Chairman Christopher Dodd told CNN Wednesday that he was responsible for language added to the federal stimulus bill to make sure that already-existing contracts for bonuses at companies receiving federal bailout money were honored.

The Democrats must be really desperate if they're resorting to honesty.

Foreign policy in the age of Obama is a total disgrace.

This type of presidential behavior is totally unacceptable:

British prime minister Gordon Brown thought long and hard about what gift to bring on his visit to the White House last week. Barack Obama is the first African-American president, so the prime minister gave him an ornamental desk-pen holder hewn from the timbers of one of the Royal Navy’s anti-slaving ships of the 19th century, HMS Gannet. Even more appropriate, in 1909 the Gannet was renamed HMS President.

The president’s guest also presented him with the framed commission for HMS Resolute, the lost British ship retrieved from the Arctic and returned by America to London, and whose timbers were used for a thank-you gift Queen Victoria sent to Rutherford Hayes: the handsome desk that now sits in the Oval Office.

And, just to round things out, as a little stocking stuffer, Gordon Brown gave President Obama a first edition of Sir Martin Gilbert’s seven-volume biography of Winston Churchill.

In return, America’s head of state gave the prime minister 25 DVDs of “classic American movies.”

Evidently, the White House gift shop was all out of “MY GOVERNMENT DELEGATION WENT TO WASHINGTON AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY T-SHIRT” T-shirts. Still, the “classic American movies” set is a pretty good substitute, and it can set you back as much as $38.99 at Wal-Mart: Lot of classics in there, I’m sure — Casablanca, Citizen Kane, The Sound of Music — though this sort of collection always slips in a couple of Dude, Where’s My Car? 3 and Police Academy 12 just to make up the numbers. I’ll be interested to know if Mr. Brown has anything to play the films on back home, since U.S.-format DVDs don’t work in United Kingdom DVD players.

Typical Democrat

Obama is following a typical far-Left foreign policy. First, make sure our rivals and enemies can humiliate us:

Russian President Dimitry Medvedev's comments came in response to a New York Times report that US President Barack Obama had written a secret letter to his Russian counterpart offering to halt the planned missile shield, which would be located mainly in Poland and the Czech Republic, in return for Moscow's help in stopping Iran from developing long-range nuclear weapons.

The Russian president welcomed the "positive signals" coming from the Obama administration with which he said he hoped to reach "agreements." "Haggling," however, was "not productive," added Medvedev on Tuesday, March 3.

The letter itself is written in the characteristic Obama diplomatic style, namely, a transparent attempt to glad-hand a foreign leader made under the cover of darkness. Even worse, if the Russian claim about the contents of the letter are true, the Russians could not have possibly openly accepted the proposal. Why? Because the Russian argument is that American missile defenses in Eastern Europe are a threat to Russia. If Russia openly agreed to pressure Iran on nukes in exchange for America removing the missile installations, they would be directly contradicting their previous position.

By the way, here's Obama desperately trying to cover his ass:

Obama on Tuesday said the Times report did not "accurately characterize the letter" he sent Medvedev.

"What I said in the letter was that, obviously, to the extent that we are lessening Iran's commitment to nuclear weapons, then that reduces the pressure for -- or the need for a missile-defense system," he said.