Mort Kondracke, Roll Call
The elections are still more than a month away, but all signs indicate that an angry electorate is going to follow the dictum of legendary screen siren Mae West: "When choosing between two evils, I always like to try the one I have not tried before."Actually, Americans have tried practically every permutation of government in recent years "” all-Republican rule (2001-2007), all-Democratic rule (1993-95 and 2009-present) and divided government with different parties in charge of the White House and Congress.But the arrangement we haven't tried lately...

Reuters - U.S. President Barack Obama met on Thursday with Sarah Shourd, an American hiker who was detained for more than a year in Iran, and vowed to press for the release of two U.S. men who are still being detained by the Iranian government, the White House said.

Ronald Brownstein, National Journal
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Charles Dunn, Chicago Tribune
Rahm Emanuel had the political experience and intellectual brilliance to become one of the most effective presidential chiefs of staff since the creation of the White House staff in 1939. But, like "Mighty Casey," he struck out.Strike one: Passion for anonymity. When the Administrative Reorganization Commission created the White House staff and the Executive Office of the President in 1939, it stipulated that their personnel should have a "passion for anonymity." That is, they should place the president's interests above their own, and they should shy away from...

Eugene Robinson, Indianapolis Star

David Brooks, New York Times
Silicon Valley, Calif. David Brooks David Brooks and Gail Collins talk between columns.If I had as much money as Meg Whitman, I’d probably have a more exuberant house. Hers is perfectly nice. But at a time when other Silicon Valley moguls were installing underground squash courts, arcade-size game rooms and other gewgaws, she stuck with a New England-style colonial. The furniture is traditional. There’s a middle-age Ford in the garage. There are definite signs of WASP parsimony and understatement here, especially compared with the $120 million...

CQPolitics.com - In a Senate contest already marked by allegations of dishonesty, video footage surfaced in Connecticut this week in which surging GOP hopeful Linda McMahon incorrectly described her connection to Congressional lobbyists.

CQPolitics.com - Speaker Nancy Pelosi isn't likely to get many invitations from vulnerable House Democrats to visit their districts between now and Nov. 2.

Politico - Not everyone sees the bailouts as a success.

The president picked Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff, it signaled his desire for a team with the skills to push his agenda through Congress. Now, in choosing Emanuel's replacement, Obama has to decide who will be best for the next stage, when Democratic majorities may be smaller, or nonexistent.

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Imagine for a moment the entire Supreme Court was wiped out in an asteroid strike, or maybe they ate some really bad clams. Whatever.

With the Supreme Court temporarily out of the picture, could Congress and the White House ignore the Constitution, shutting down newspapers and locking up tea partiers or ACLU members?

Apparently.

“I have been fascinated by [Delaware GOP Senate candidate] Christine O’Donnell’s constitutional worldview . . .”  Slate senior editor Dahlia Lithwick confessed. O’Donnell had said in a debate, “When I go to Washington, D.C., the litmus test by which I cast my vote for every piece of legislation that comes across my desk will be whether or not it is constitutional.”

#ad#To which Lithwick, a former appellate law clerk, Stanford Law grad, and widely cited expert on the Supreme Court, responded, “How weird is that, I thought. Isn’t it a court’s job to determine whether or not something is, in fact, constitutional? And isn’t that sort of provided for in, well, the Constitution?”

Newsweek’s Ben Adler was aghast at the clause in the GOP’s Pledge to America that Republicans will provide a “citation of constitutional authority” for every proposed piece of legislation. “We have a mechanism for assessing the constitutionality of legislation, which is the independent judiciary,” Adler wrote. “An extraconstitutional attempt to limit the powers of Congress is dangerous even as a mere suggestion, and it constitutes an encroachment on the judiciary.” 

A progressive blogger, meanwhile, writes in U.S. News & World Report that such talk of requiring constitutionality is “just wacky.”

Before we get to the historical niceties, a question.

Does anyone, anywhere, think legislators should vote for legislation they think is unconstitutional? Anyone? Anyone?

How about presidents? Should they sign such legislation into law?

Yet, according to this creepy logic, there’s no reason for congressmen to pass, obey, or even consider the supreme law of the land. Reimpose slavery? Sure! Let’s see if we can catch the Supreme Court asleep at the switch. Nationalize the TV stations? Establish a king? Kill every first-born child? Why not? It ain’t unconstitutional until the Supreme Court says so!

And of course, that means the president can’t veto legislation because it’s unconstitutional, because that’s apparently not his job. Wouldn’t want to “encroach” on the judiciary!

Of course, reasonable people understand how absurd all of this is.

There’s nothing in the Constitution -- nothing! -- that says the Supreme Court is the final or sole arbiter of what is or is not constitutional.

#page#Nor is there anything in Marbury v. Madison, the Supreme Court case that famously established judicial review. Nor is there in Cooper v. Aaron, the 1958 case in which the Court ruled that its findings are the law of the land.

George Washington vetoed an apportionment bill in 1792 because it was unconstitutional. What was he thinking? If only he’d had a Ben Adler around to tell him what a fool he was.

#ad#Andrew Jackson vetoed the reauthorization of the national bank in 1832 because he believed it was unconstitutional. He added at the time that “it is as much the duty of the House of Representatives, of the Senate, and of the President to decide upon the constitutionality of any bill or resolution which may be presented to them for passage or approval as it is of the supreme judges when it may be brought before them for judicial decision.”

“Even the Supreme Court has never claimed that it is the only branch with the power or duty to interpret the Constitution,” says Jeff Sikkenga, a constitutional historian at Ashland University’s Ashbrook Center. “In fact, it has said that certain constitutional questions like war and peace are left to the political branches to decide.”

The debate over whether the courts are the final word on the Constitution is more than 200 years old. The debate over whether they are the sole arbiter of constitutionality is extremely recent and extremely silly.

But it’s also necessary because too many politicians -- in both parties -- have abdicated their most solemn duty: to support and defend the U.S. Constitution. George W. Bush signed campaign-finance reform even though he thought much of it was unconstitutional. Nancy Pelosi thinks the Constitution has as much relevance as a pet rock. When asked if the health-care bill was constitutional, her perpetually wide-open eyes grew perceptibly wider as she incredulously asked, “Are you serious?”

The real issue is quite simple. If more politicians were faithful to the Constitution, the government would be restrained. And restraining government is “weird,” “wacky,” and “dangerous” to so many liberals today.

-- Jonah Goldberg is an editor-at-large of National Review Online and a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. © 2010 Tribune Media Services, Inc.

Of all the things the Newark, N.J., school system needs, the last of them is more money. Newark spends more per pupil than any other city in the country, and gets dismayingly little for it. For $22,000 per pupil — more than twice the national average — it graduates half its students.

It’s easy to imagine Newark spending $44,000 per pupil and arriving at the same dismaying outcome. Nonetheless, billionaire Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is showering money on a school system that’s about as short on cash as he is. His $100 million grant is a vote of confidence in Newark mayor Cory Booker and New Jersey governor Chris Christie, both compelling reformers. Even if they had a clear plan to fix Newark’s schools, though, they wouldn’t need to add another $100 million on top of the system’s $940 million annual budget to do it.

#ad#In microcosm, the Newark gift captures this moment in education reform. There’s earnest chatter about change and even some progress on the ground, at the same time that the bloated, ineffectual, and corrupt status quo has never been more flush in federal dollars. If the old Watergate admonition to follow the money applied, it’d be clear that the entrenched forces arrayed against a hardy band of charter-school pioneers and reforming superintendents are winning in a rout.

The Obama administration’s “Race to the Top” program represents its main claim to moderation in domestic policy. It encourages states to submit reform plans in a competition for a kitty of $4.35 billion in additional federal funds. This all sounds admirably nonideological and innovative, until you realize it’s a mere gloss on a massive gusher of spending-as-unusual.

The stimulus bill devoted $100 billion to education (about $80 billion of it for K–12). As Reason magazine notes, that’s twice the Department of Education’s annual budget. “Race to the Top” is less than 5 percent of this staggering gusher of money. It’s not “Race to the Top” that is the Obama administration’s signature education initiative, but spending that the teachers’ unions would only have dreamed of two short years ago.

These funds have kept school systems from having to undertake wrenching changes, or any changes at all. They have helped goose federal spending on education from $37.5 billion in the last year of the Bush administration to $88.8 billion in the second year of the Obama administration, according to the calculations of Jay Greene of the University of Arkansas.

While the private economy has shed 8 million jobs in a work force of 150 million during the downturn, the $550 billon education system has added jobs. It’s the great wonder of the American economy, growing during recessions and regardless of its quality. If everyone in America were a teacher, we’d truly be a worker’s paradise.

The spending would be justified if it correlated with outcomes. It doesn’t. We have tripled per-pupil spending during the past four decades, while results have largely stayed flat. The money has been poured into personnel, on the theory that more teachers equals more learning. If the teachers are unexceptional, that’s not true. The compensation structure of teachers — with a large portion of their pay devoted to pensions and benefits — tends to attract careerists looking to settle into jobs for life.

The resulting insular culture of nonaccountability is nearly impossible to crack. In Washington, D.C., Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee has made an impressive go of it. She’s the heroine of the new, buzz-generating documentary Waiting for Superman. The film’s release may turn out only to be a perverse prelude to Rhee’s defenestration, since a political backlash against her system-rattling reforms has unseated her mayoral patron, Adrian Fenty.

Whether the likes of Rhee succeed or not, we can be sure that the maw of the education system will continue to gobble up whatever resources are thrown at it. For decades, national education reform has meant more centralization and more federal spending. Maybe it’s time to try the opposite.

— Rich Lowry is editor of National Review. He can be reached via e-mail, comments.lowry@nationalreview.com. © 2010 by King Features Syndicate.

Primetime liberal comedians have it made. All they need to do is spend a few hours with a politically correct minority and -- voilà! -- they’re transformed into instant congressional experts. Democrats invited Stephen Colbert to drape himself in the more-compassionate-than-thou mantle last week on behalf of illegal-alien migrant workers. But not all “people of color” are equal. 

Minority Americans who have suffered the bloody consequences of open borders are out of luck. No Hollywood celeb wants to walk in their shoes.

After picking veggies for a day at an upstate New York farm, Colbert descended on Washington to lament the suffering of illegal agricultural workers. While “in character” as a conservative talk-show host, he backhandedly mocked those who oppose a blanket AgJobs amnesty program by sneering, “U.S.A. Number One!” Many law-abiding citizens took offense -- and not just those who fit the entertainment world’s stereotype of white, right-wing tea partiers.

#ad#Althea Rae Shaw of Los Angeles wrote an outraged open letter to Colbert after last week’s Capitol Hill circus. She is the aunt of 17-year-old Jamiel Andre Shaw II, a young black high-school student who was gunned down by an illegal-alien gang member in 2008 amid brown-on-black violence in southern California. The Shaw family has spearheaded efforts to repeal dangerous sanctuary policies in Los Angeles that protect criminal illegal aliens and handcuff local law enforcement. “It truly breaks my heart that so many people in positions of power and authority continue to make light of illegal immigration,” Shaw wrote to Colbert.

“Are you aware of, and/or concerned with, the fact that American citizens and legal immigrants are murdered every day by illegal aliens? Have you ever spent one second thinking about that?” the grieving aunt asked the smirky comic. “What if your mother was shot in the head by an illegal alien? Do you think you could make that funny? What about your children? Would it be comical if your daughter or your son or your niece or nephew was lying in the street dead, shot in the head by someone living in this country illegally?”

In her letter, Shaw recounted the horrific case of Cheryl Green for Colbert. She was a 14-year-old Los Angeles girl murdered by illegal-alien gang members in 2006, along with another young resident who had witnessed the gang’s violence. Cheryl’s crime? Being black. Her killers were Latino gangbangers Jonathan Fajardo and Daniel Aguilar. Last month they were convicted of first-degree murder in a hate-crime trial where one of the Hispanic gang members testified bluntly: “Basically, we’re against all black people.”

No, not all illegal aliens are murderers. But neither are all illegal-alien migrants harmless workers. And as too many families who will never get Colbert’s attention or sympathy have come to understand, lax immigration enforcement might mean cheaper arugula in Manhattan -- but it also can cost untold lives across the heartland.

In Houston, Texas, 14-year-old Shatavia Anderson was gunned down last month by a twice-deported illegal alien from El Salvador who simply waltzed back into the country. Shatavia’s grieving uncle, Joe Lambert, lambasted open-borders policies that send a signal that illegal aliens “can do whatever they want. What you’re doing is giving them a green light telling them, ‘Hey, you can do whatever you want.’” Lambert is lobbying for tougher immigration enforcement. “I would like to see what they’re doing in Arizona done here.”

I’d like to see the likes of Stephen Colbert (or the Obama administration) suggest that Lambert is an ignorant racist.

Putting American sovereignty and security first may invite scorn from elite character actors and their snickering Democratic enablers. But outside D.C.’s Open Borders Theater, there are no laugh tracks, just tears. Shaw issued Colbert a challenge: “Why not invite about 40 families who lost loved ones due to illegal immigration to come to your studio? Then you can tell us all about your experience working on this farm. You can even tell us how bad your back was hurting when you were working with illegal aliens. I wonder how many families would laugh and think that’s funny.”

The Colbert Congress served one useful purpose: It showed America that Tinseltown’s heart bleeds only out of its left chambers

--- Michelle Malkin is the author of Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks & Cronies (Regnery, 2010). © 2010 Creators Syndicate, Inc.

From the beginning, the call to arms was highly uncertain. On Dec. 1, 2009, commander-in-chief Barack Obama orders 30,000 more Americans into battle in Afghanistan. But in the very next sentence, he announces that an American withdrawal will begin after 18 months.

Astonishing. A surge of troops -- overall, Obama has tripled our Afghan force -- with a declaration not of war, but of ambivalence. Nine months later, Marine Corps Commandant James Conway admitted that this decision was “probably giving our enemy sustenance.” This wasn’t conjecture, he insisted, but the stuff of intercepted Taliban communications testifying to their relief that they simply had to wait out the Americans.

#ad#What kind of commander in chief sends tens of thousands of troops to war while announcing in advance a fixed date for beginning their withdrawal? One who doesn’t have his heart in it. One who doesn’t really want to win but is making some kind of political gesture. One who thinks he has to be seen as trying but is preparing the ground -- meaning, the political cover -- for failure.

Until now, the above was just inference from the president’s public rhetoric. No longer. Now we have the private quotes. Bob Woodward’s book, Obama’s Wars, drawing on classified memos and interviews with scores of national-security officials, has Obama telling his advisers: “I want an exit strategy.” He tells the country publicly that Afghanistan is a “vital national interest,” but he tells his generals that he will not do the kind of patient institution-building that is the very essence of the counterinsurgency strategy that Generals McChrystal and Petraeus crafted and that he himself adopted.

Moreover, he must find an exit because “I can’t lose the whole Democratic party.” This admission is the most crushing of all.

First, isn’t this the party that in two consecutive presidential campaigns -- John Kerry’s and then Obama’s -- argued vociferously that Afghanistan was the good war, the right war, the war of necessity, the central front in the War on Terror? Now, after acceding to power and being given charge of that very war, Obama confides that he must retreat lest that very same party abandon him. What happened in the interim? Did it suddenly develop a faint heart? Or was the party disingenuous about the Afghan war all along, using it as a convenient club with which to attack George W. Bush over Iraq, while protecting Democrats from the charge of being reflexively antiwar?

#page#
Whatever the reason, is it not Obama’s job as president and party leader to bring the party with him? This is the man who made Berlin coo, America swoon, and the Nobel committee lose its mind. Yet he cannot get his own party to follow him on what he insists is a matter of vital national interest?

Did he even try? Obama spent endless hours cajoling and persuading individual members of Congress to garner every last vote for health-care reform. Has he done a fraction of that for Afghanistan -- argued, pleaded, horse-traded, twisted even a single arm?

#ad#And what about persuading the country at large? Every war is arduous and requires continual presidential explication, inspiration, and encouragement. This has been true from Lincoln through FDR through Bush. Since announcing his Afghan surge, Obama’s only major speech that featured Afghanistan was an Oval Office address about America’s leaving Iraq -- the Afghan part being sandwiched between that and a long-winded plea for his economic policies.

“He was looking for choices that would limit U.S. involvement and provide a way out,” writes Woodward. One can only conclude that Obama now thinks Afghanistan is a mistake. Maybe he thought so from the very beginning. More charitably and more likely, he is simply a foreign-policy novice who didn’t understand what this war was about until being given the authority and duty to conduct it -- and then decided it was all a mistake.

Fair enough. But in that case, what is he doing escalating it?

Senator Kerry, now chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, asked many years ago: “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?” Perhaps Kerry should ask that of Obama.

“He is out of Afghanistan psychologically,” says Woodward of Obama. Well, he may be out, but the soldiers he ordered to Afghanistan are in.

Some will not come home.

-- Charles Krauthammer is a nationally syndicated columnist. © 2010, The Washington Post Writers Group

Income inequality, we learn from the Census Bureau, has reached its highest level since data were first collected on the subject in 1967. Poverty has increased dramatically, with one of seven Americans now falling below the poverty threshold.

Additionally, the Census Bureau reports that the rate of marriage has declined since the recession began. Just 52 percent of adults over the age of 18 are married now, compared with 57 percent a decade ago. “Given the scope of the recent recession, many more couples are likely to choose cohabitation over marriage in the coming years,” Mark Mather of the Population Reference Bureau told the AP.

Mr. Mather may be correct, but, if so, Americans are choosing exactly the wrong way to weather hard times, because marriage is one of the surest ways to escape poverty.

#ad#Some of those moving in together cite practicality. It’s cheaper for two to share an apartment, microwave, utilities, etc., than for each to have his or her own. These efficiencies hold true for cohabiting couples as much as for marrieds. Modern weddings being expensive affairs, economically strapped young people may be choosing to skip the big party and just move in together, thinking that they are being prudent.

But cohabitation doesn’t begin to confer the benefits that marriage does. In The State of Our Unions, scholars associated with the Institute for American Values (IAV) outline some of the advantages married couples enjoy over their single counterparts. “Men who marry,” writes Alex Roberts, “typically earn more because marriage itself leads to increases in income; that is, men who marry work harder, work smarter, and earn more than their unmarried peers. . . . Cohabiting couples . . . are less likely to pool resources, feel obligated to spend wisely and save, or invest in the future of the household.” Married men earn between 10 percent and 40 percent more than their single counterparts with similar educational and job histories.

Married couples also create more wealth than single people or cohabiting couples. “A 1992 study of retirement data concluded that ‘individuals who are not continuously married have significantly lower wealth than those who remain married throughout their lives.’” A study of 7,608 household heads between 1984 and 1989 found that those who married saw income increases of 50 percent to 100 percent, and net wealth increases of 400 percent to 600 percent. “Continuously married households had about double the income and four times the net worth of the continuously divorced and never-married, on average.”

Marriage also bestows more emotional well-being. A study by W. Bradford Wilcox and others, “Marriage and Mental Health in Adults and Children,” reports that “Married Americans were more than twice as likely as divorced or separated Americans to say they were very happy with life in general. Cohabiting, never-married, and widowed individuals’ happiness resembled that of divorced and separated people more than married people.” Married people were also less likely to suffer from depression and other forms of mental anguish: “Married men and women report fewer symptoms of mental illness and psychological distress than do otherwise similar individuals who are not married. Longitudinal research shows that it is not merely that mentally healthy people are more likely to get or stay married. Instead, marriage itself appears to boost mental health. Remaining unmarried or getting divorced seems to result, on average, in a deterioration in mental well-being.”

Children of married couples are far healthier mentally and physically than the children of cohabiting, divorced, or never-married couples. Wilcox et al. cite one study suggesting that the tripling of the teen suicide rate over the past half-century is closely associated with divorce, while married men are half as likely as single men to kill themselves.

Marriage knits the couple into a kinship network in which interest-free loans, babysitting, elder care, and other forms of assistance in hard times are more readily available. Sadly, among those most in need of these added supports -- those with lower levels of education -- marriage is in steep decline. More than 50 percent of new mothers without college degrees are unmarried, compared with only 7 percent of mothers with college diplomas. In fact, among the college-educated, marriage has strengthened over the past several decades, leading to a “marriage gap” that goes a long way toward explaining the slowing of growth in family income over the past generation. Married-couple families have become a rapidly diminishing segment of total families over the past 20 years.

The young adults who move in together imagining that a wedding is too expensive are paying a far higher price than they recognize.

— Mona Charen is a nationally syndicated columnist. © 2010 Creators Syndicate.

News Corp., the parent company of Fox News, contributed $1 million this summer to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the business lobby that has been running an aggressive campaign in support of the Republican effort to retake Congress, a source close to the company told POLITICO.

It was the second $1 million contribution the company has made this election cycle to a GOP-aligned group. In late June it gave that amount to the Republican Governors Association.

The parent companies of other media companies such as Disney (which owns ABC) and General Electric (which owns NBC) have also made political contributions, but typically in far smaller chunks, and split between Democrats and Republicans.

AP - Republican Newt Gingrich took aim at the Obama administration's counterterror efforts Thursday, saying government officials aren't keeping America secure.

AP - Meg Whitman's campaign for governor was thrown into turmoil Thursday as the Republican sought to fend off new evidence that she knowingly had an illegal immigrant housekeeper on her payroll for nearly a decade.

Meg blinked for the first time in an almost flawless campaign. Until this week, it appeared that the GOP had successfully rolled out their new product -- a conservative, ambitious businesswoman with a big check book. Her branding was effective and her television advertising brilliant. Political consultant Mike Murphy earned his money. Team Meg was launched, and they were relentless. Nothing really hampered or stuck to them until "the blink" -- involving her domestic help in her Atherton hacienda (no pun intended).

To be blunt, Jerry Brown sure caught a big break this week. The race was in a dead heat with Brown moving slightly ahead, and many independents still on the sidelines. To be frank, Brown had virtually run an invisible campaign until right after Labor Day. Many Democrats thought he could afford the luxury of sitting on his laurels (maybe) because of his legacy. But the reality was that Meg could not and she had to spend early and often to create her brand. Many of feared that she a runaway train in hand-to-hand combat with the invisible man. Talk about a scary election for Democrats. It is one that will become a case study in politics and branding for years to come.

Well the wheel spun and the dice were thrown. Lady luck came down on Jerry this week. It's kind of like watching Apple's latest iPhone launch and their goof. The question is will Team Meg will have the staying power to sustain a frontal attack. Their campaign is now playing defense, and under fire that the candidate never saw coming. The domestic help issue is a big no-no. It has taken down many political candidates and appointments over the years. She probably did not understand the severity because if she had it would have been cleaned up. Let's face it, Meg is a political virgin but her advisors are not. It remains to be seen how this potentially fatal crisis is handled by Team Meg. How will this react, and how will the Brown campaign handle itself? Dancing a jig on an open casket won't cut it for them. Will Team Brown leverage the avalanche of earned media? Will they play well with social media? Or will they sit on the sidelines? It remains to be seen as this California soap opera continues to unfold.

Please see below the pearltree of some of the references used in this article.

WASHINGTON — Federal authorities are suing the Fox News Network for allegedly retaliating against a reporter after she complained about unequal pay and job conditions based on her gender and age.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission says Fox News Channel reporter Catherine Herridge filed an internal complaint about allegedly discriminatory practices in 2007.

Fox found no evidence of bias, but the EEOC says the network later included language in Herridge's employment contract intended to stop her from making any more complaints.

Herridge refused to sign the contract. The network agreed to remove the language after she complained to the EEOC.

The EEOC seeks unspecified monetary damages and a court order enjoining Fox from retaliating against other employees.

Gary Andres, Weekly Standard
Thursday,September 30, 2010 The Democrats and the 2010 Budget Fiasco This dereliction of duty is unprecedented. BY Gary Andres Morning Jay: California Polling, Castle Bows Out, and the Politics of the Census! BY Jay Cost As Sweden Goes ."�."�. The worldwide Tea Party. BY Henry Olsen October 4,...

WASHINGTON — Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke says he doesn't need to be surrounded by yes men – or women.

Bernanke said Thursday there has been "plenty of disagreement" among the members of the Federal Reserve's main policymaking group, whose power to influence interest rates for all kinds of loans is important to Americans' pocketbooks.

And there may be more disagreement than usual these days, he acknowledged, as Fed policymakers struggle to find the best way to help the economy recover from the worst recession since the 1930s.

But that's OK, the Fed chief said. Different views can eventually lead to better decisions, he added.

Bernanke's remarks came in response to a question during a town-hall style meeting with teachers on at the Fed's downtown headquarters.

"It's good to have different views," he said.

Building consensus is an important part of Bernanke's job. Especially now.

There are divisions within the Fed over how to pump up the economy and lower unemployment.

Some Fed officials have clashed over how much help would come from one likely next step – buying more government debt. Others have different thoughts about the size of any new aid programs. And yet others are skeptical about providing any extra help.

The Fed policymakers delivered a strong signal last week at their meeting that they are prepared to act if the economy weakened. High on the list of unconventional tools is buying more government debt, known as quantitative easing.

The goal is to force down rates on consumer and businesses loans even further to get Americans to boost their spending. Doing so, would help the economy.

Bernanke took a jab at the media when asked about its role in Americans' flagging confidence in the economy.

He said teachers, students and others should be a "little skeptical" about what the media report. The media tend to "make good times too hot and bad times too cold," Bernanke said. That's why it is so critical to get information from a variety of sources, he said.

Bernanke, who spent much of his professional life in academia, used to teach economics at Princeton University as well as other institutions. He's also married to a teacher.

Politico - She refuses to vote for any bill killing tax breaks for the wealthy, calling it a "mistake."

Hydraulic gas drilling, also known as fracture drilling or fracking, promises to scale back the United States' dependence on foreign sources of energy. But the development of natural gas underneath 50% of New York, 65% of Pennsylvania, about half of Ohio and all of West Virginia has sparked fierce debate among environmentalists and energy companies.

The process involves drilling down into rock formation and exploding it by using very high pressure liquid, mainly water - between two and seven million gallons of water per well mixed with sand and toxic chemicals. The deep pressure explosion results in freeing gas from shale rock to produce hydrocarbons.

At issue - whether the remaining chemicals are leaching into the drinking water of millions of Americans. Gas and oil companies now have their sights set on the Marcellus Shale, an interconnected watershed that delivers water to 16 million people in New York, Philadelphia, southern New Jersey, Ohio and West Virginia. Environmentalists are sounding the alarm that widespread drilling could taint the water supply.

In 2004, an Environmental Protection Agency study found no evidence of water contamination caused by fracking, a procedure used in this country for more than 60 years. But according to EPA employee and whistleblower Weston Wilson, the report was "scientifically unsound." One of the study's three main authors, Jeffrey Jollie points out that "it was never intended to be a broad, sweeping study." It should be further noted that no samples were taken during the study.

Meanwhile, there are growing concerns about pollution, water contamination and health risks associated with hydraulic fracturing. One Dallas-Ft.Worth couple recently abandoned their home after doctors discovered fracking chemicals in their blood stream and lungs. In Dimock, Pennsylvania, a woman's well water tested positive for ethylene glycol, propylene glycol and toluene after natural gas companies drilled in her area. Other residents were able to light their tap water on fire.

Josh Fox's documentary "Gasland", offers a compelling argument against hydraulic fracturing. The film follows Fox on his cross-country quest for answers about hydraulic fracking. Fox declined $100,000 to allow a gas company to drill on his Delaware River Basin property. He says the energy giants are destroying the environment just to make a profit.

"It's a scam. It's changing our entire American environmental democratic system to shoot the profits of energy companies. They can dump toxic materials into rivers and streams. They can pollute the air and they don't have to clean up afterwards."

Fox is referring to an exemption in the 2005 Energy Policy Act known as the Halliburton Loophole which prevents the EPA from regulating hydraulic gas drilling. The provision was a single page inserted in one of the longest bills ever passed. A bi-partisan majority signed off on the measure, including Senator Obama, with only 25 lawmakers voting against it, including Sens. Biden, Clinton, Kyl, Kennedy, McCain, Schumer and Voinavich to name a few. The reality is, many lawmakers probably never read the near 1400 page measure.

But as Fox points out, "There were people who understood what the exemption was but I think most of it sounds like there was a lot of ignorance about hydraulic fracturing in 2005. It hadn't been done a lot. It really exploded after the measure was passed."

Now Congress is considering a measure to regulate fracture drilling in advance of the EPA's 2012 study on the process. The FRAC Act would require energy companies to fully disclose chemicals used in fracture drilling. Earlier this year, two top oil-field executives voluntarily disclosed to the House Energy Committee that their companies had pumped hundreds of thousands of diesel fluid in their fracturing compound - in violation of a voluntary agreement with the EPA.

Yet industry executives insist fracking poses no environmental health risks. Institute for Energy Research President Thomas J. Pyle, in response to Amy Harder's National Journal post on the subject states, "The debate about hydraulic fracturing is more about EPA regulation of the process, which... has been successfully regulated by individual states since the inception of the technology in 1949, than disclosure."

Pyle adds, "More importantly, by giving the EPA regulatory oversight of this process, the environmental movement scores a victory by shutting down the exploration of oil and natural gas as regulations are written. At its core, that's exactly what the green movement seeks to accomplish."

New York Environmental Protection Bureau Chief Peter Lehner, in the same article notes, "... fracking for natural gas is acceptable only if safeguards on the entire extraction process are in place. And right now, they are not. The consequences speak for themselves. Numerous investigations show that insufficiently regulated natural gas extraction has been shown to contaminate drinking water and endanger human health."

Currently energy companies are exempt from the major environmental laws including the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Clean Air Act, allowing them carte blanche to inject toxic materials into the ground near major water sources without being monitored.

Fox says, "The big problem is that the gas companies are so powerful they are actually convincing the federal government to overlook the damage to the water supply for a short term energy fix. They have enough money that they've persuaded state and federal governments that it's not a bad plan, when it's a horrible plan. When you start contaminating all the water supply it's a very scary thing."

Exxon Mobil's $41-billion merger last December with natural gas company XTO allows for drilling in the Catskill and Delaware watersheds, which supply drinking water to all of New York City. It's significant to note a clause in the merger states Exxon can back out of the deal if the Safe Drinking Water Act is reinstated.

"So they know exactly what they're doing," Fox says. "They know that stuff poses a hazard to the environment and they'll get out of it. It's all about their profit margins."

A great deal of money is at stake and lawmakers may undoubtedly feel the pressure to support fracture drilling which promises to create 2.8 million jobs. In Pennsylvania, hard hit by the economy, the gas and oil companies have secured 550 drilling permits, creating nearly 30,000 jobs and $240 million in state and local tax revenue.

Fox argues the economic boost is a bad deal for Pennsylvania. "I don't know why you can't green and revitalize Pennsylvania's economy by starting more off the grid houses since there are already more off the grid water supplies than anywhere in the country. It's the perfect atmosphere. Having small windmills and solar panels and that would be supplementing your energy needs. Besides, once you have destroyed the water supplies, it's so much more expensive to deal with that problem than it is to deal with an alternative energy source."

As companies continue to drill, accounts of fracking dangers surface as well. In Allentown, Pennsylvania, 13 families have filed lawsuits against Southwestern Energy Company for allegedly leaking toxic fluid into local groundwater, exposing residents to poisonous chemicals and contaminating their water wells.

New York water may also be under threat. The environmental group Riverkeeper, testifying at an EPA hearing on September 16, 2010, detailed more than 100 cases of water contamination due to fracture drilling across the country.

According to Associated Press:

"Riverkeeper documented more than 20 cases of tainted drinking water in Pennsylvania; more than 30 cases of groundwater and drinking water contamination in Colorado and Wyoming; and more than 10 surface water spills of drilling fluid in the Marcellus Shale region. Pennsylvania's Department of Environmental Protection has logged 1,435 violations of the state's oil and gas laws in the Marcellus Shale in the last two and a half years."

With those numbers in mind, Fox notes, "To not be monitoring what toxic chemicals an industry is pumping into the ground is insane, especially in large quantities near a water supply."