Today New York State’s new Governor Michael Paterson visited Rochester and I was able to go hear what he had to say. Honestly there wasn’t much to report back on other than he was an hour late and he seems at least interested in working with our part of NY. You might not know it but there has always been a little battle between Western New York and NY City. The city gets all of the attention and money and we typically get a lot of promises with very little in return.

Meanwhile our economy is falling apart, people are leaving in droves and crime/murder is outrageous, yes we have a lot to celebrate! Come live in Rochester, PLEASE!

It was at the very least nice to see a Governor come here so quickly after his inauguration and nice to hear him say he plans on working with us.

Today conservative thinker and commentator William F. Buckley passed away in his study at the age of 82.

As a tribute, Andrew Sullivan in addition to writing about the author, posted some YouTube videos of the rightest thinker Buckley taking on the leftist thinker Noam Chomsky. When you spend time studying in a liberal arts focused college learning about media as I did, you spend far more time on the thoughts of those like Chomsky than you do William F. Buckley Jr. With that said my post-college years have afforded me more time to study conservative thought and though I don’t have much experiencing consuming his work first hand, his influence spreads far and wide and ideas have much of what I have read.

So joining Sullivan, here are some moments from YouTube.

The Los Angeles Times reports on a study to appear in nature conducted at New York University and UCLA which shows political affiliation is linked to differences in how the brain processes information. Put short “conservatives tend to be more structured and persistent in their judgments whereas liberals are more open to new experiences”.

It sounds interesting and follows other experiments that show similar results. The problem? I wouldn’t go racing out to declare these results as gospel truth anytime soon. The study was conducted on college students and only 43 of them, which wasn’t noted in the article but I asked the author. (Note a great deal of research like this is done with college students because they are the available population).

The article also did not note how many of those 43 were self appointed conservatives and how many were liberals and to what degree their political affiliation went. In addition there is an obvious point. Students who are in college tend to be liberal and they are open to new experiences. Their minds are developing because they are often outside their home environment/comfort zone, meeting new people and just experiencing things.

In addition we also know many of these students go on to become conservatives. There is the old expression “If you are conservative when you are twenty you are heartless if you are liberal when you are forty you are mindless” or something to that effect. So in the end if there are specific brain differences why would people change and/or how do they change physically?

Again interesting article and research but I don’t know if I would put much weight in it.

RAW STORY is reporting that the White House held a blogger conference call to give the administrations talking points on executive privilege.

At the urging of top conservative bloggers, the White House set up a Friday morning conference call to promote its message on the subject of executive privilege, RAW STORY has found.

“The White House hosted a blogger conference call to discuss the issues surrounding the Bush administration’s use of executive privilege in the probe of the firings of eight federal prosecutors,” wrote Ed Morrissey, who produces the blog Captains Quarters. “The White House arranged the call based on a recommendation by this blog, in order to familiarize the blogosphere with the legal and political arguments on which the administration will rely to prevail in the upcoming fight regarding the contempt citations Congress seems likely to approve.”

Though the article suggests the end result might not have been entirely successful it does show the growing power of bloggers.

A post from Robert Bluey shows that this isn’t the first time the White House has gone directly to bloggers.

From Associated Press:

WASHINGTON – Sen. David Vitter, R-La., apologized Monday night for “a very serious sin in my past” after his telephone number appeared among those associated with an escort service operated by the so-called “D.C. Madam.”

Vitter’s spokesman, Joel Digrado, confirmed the statement in an e-mail sent to The Associated Press.

“This was a very serious sin in my past for which I am, of course, completely responsible,” Vitter said in the statement. “Several years ago, I asked for and received forgiveness from God and my wife in confession and marriage counseling. Out of respect for my family, I will keep my discussion of the matter there — with God and them. But I certainly offer my deep and sincere apologies to all I have disappointed and let down in any way.”

Vitter is also the Southern Regional Chair of Rudy Giuliani’s 2008 Presidential campaign.

Allegations of Vitters involvement with a prostitute are not new. From a Salon article:

Vitter, Bruno and others interviewed the alleged prostitute several times in 1999. She also met with a respected local television reporter, Richard Angelico, the Louisiana Weekly said. But Angelico declined to run with the story after she would not agree to go on camera, the paper said. Vitter denied the allegations. But shortly before the Louisiana Weekly was set to publish its story, he dropped out of the governor’s race, saying he needed to deal with marital problems. “Our [marriage] counseling sessions have … led us to the rather obvious conclusion that it’s not time to run for governor,” Vitter said at the time.

Vitters wife was noted in the article as saying the following:

Asked by an interviewer in 2000 whether she could forgive her husband if she learned he’d had an extramarital affair, as Hillary Clinton and Bob Livingston’s wife had done, Wendy Vitter told the Times-Picayune: “I’m a lot more like Lorena Bobbitt than Hillary. If he does something like that, I’m walking away with one thing, and it’s not alimony, trust me.”

By now you have probably heard the term executive privilege and its invocation quite a bit. MSNBC takes some time out to explain what the term means and how it has been used by Presidents in the past.

In a movie that could shake up Washington and potentially the ‘08 Election the famed DC Madam has posted her phone records online for the world to see.

“We’re all just waiting for this nincompoop to be gone. I think we’re all finally on the same page on that.”

– Noted by Howard Kurtz from Coulters appearance on Good Morning America this morning

Meanwhile Republican Sen. Voinovich & Luger appear to on the last leg of support for Bush and skeptical of the surge. Is the end of George Bush’s alliance with conservatives really over?

The Washington Post is reporting that former aides of President Bush who helped get the No Child Left Behind education reform act passed are now urging lawmakers not to reauthorize the bill.

In March 57 Republicans signed onto bills that allowed states to opt-out of the provision, the first signal that there could be legislative changes. In addition a growing rift is happening in the electorate where many conservatives who were fearful of the bill to begin with are now vocally getting on blogs and talk radio with their opposition.

A new president will have to face a growing education problem in this country. By not re-authorizing the act the Congress could give a new president and the states a clean slate to work with after the elections.

Today Congress will once again attempt to revive an immigration bill. The immediate outcome of any bill that provides for anything even resembling “amnesty” will be most felt on all the Republican candidates. The wisdom of the campaigns, aside from McCain’s and to a degree Giuliani’s, is this. Since the president and many Republicans in Congress are moving to the left, move as far as is humanly possible to the right.

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