With this post, Power Line bids farewell to the AOL Newsblogger site. This need not mean farewell to readers, however. We invite them to visit us at Power Line and to participate in the Power Line Forum.

We've enjoyed our time with Newsbloggers. However, John and I are both full-time lawyers who blog as a hobby. We've decided that the limited time we have for our hobby is best spent entirely on our own blog.

We thank AOL, and especially our friend Coates Bateman, for giving us the opportunity to participate on this blog. And we wish our former co-bloggers well.

Yesterday, I examined Hillary Clinton's claim that the Supreme Court's decision on race-based school assignments has "turned the clock back on history." I argued, among other things, that the race-based assignment systems the Court struck down were not systems without which the schools in question would be segregrated. I also noted that the Court's decision does not permit schools to re-impose segregration by discriminating against any group.

Dinesh D'Souza has already commented on Hillary Clinton's statement that the Supreme Court's decision on race-based school assignments "turned the clock back on history." However, her remark fails to make sense at so many levels that it's worth further comment.

Presumably, Clinton meant that the Court had turned back the clock to the time when public school systems engaged in racial segregation. But these cases weren't about racial segregation. To give just one example from the record, the Seattle school board took race into account in assigning students to Franklin High School, which is located in a "non-white" part of the city. As a result of these efforts, the student body at Franklin was 40 percent white; 30 percent Asian American; 22 percent African American; and 8 percent Latino. Without the race-based assignments, the student body would have been 21 percent white; 40 percent Asian-American; 31 percent African-American; and 8 percent Latino. My recollection of the late 1950s may be hazy, but I'm pretty sure that moving from the former outcome to the latter won't bring us back to those days.

Mo Rocca's discussion of why the immigration reform legislation failed in Congress is unpersuasive. He contends that the legislation failed because it's complex -- too complex for the American people to understand now that President Bush has helped convert us into a nation of simpletons. (As aside, I haven't witnessed the word "dumb" thrown around as much as it is by authors on this blog since my daughters passed the age of seven).

Jeff Hoard wrote recently about how fortunate he was that when he broke his arm as a kid, he broke it in Canada, where socialized medicine is in place, rather than in the U.S. We hope that Jeff doesn't encounter any serious medical problems, so he can remain content in his "workers' paradise."

Canadian Lindsay McCreith is not content. As David Gratzer, a health care expert and practicing physician licensed in Canada and the U.S., reports, McCreith was required to wait for four months just to get an MRI, and then months more to see a neurologist for his malignant brain tumor. Frustrated and ill, he traveled to Buffalo, N.Y. for a lifesaving surgery. Now he's suing for the right to opt out of Canada's government-run health care, which he considers dangerous to his health.

The Democrats have longed claimed to be serious about fighting al-Qaeda, just not in Iraq where there's so much sectarian violence. Thus, as noted by The Hill, the Democrats pressed their case to withdraw troops from Iraq by citing the need to refocus on Afghanistan. But now, again according to The Hill, the Democrats are losing their enthusiasm for fighting al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.

In truth, the Democrats have no stomach for fighting al Qaeda anywhere. They are essentially a pacifist party, a fact they try to disguise by touting their willingness to commit to military actions other than the one that's front and center. If Iraq is off the table, the next objective will be to get our troops out of Afghanistan so they'll be available for some other purpose that will be conjured up.

At some level, I suppose this is a clever ploy. But it has the disadvantage of handing al Qaeda victories (not to mention bases from which again to attack the West) it can't attain otherwise.

The Supreme Court struck a blow for free speech today in a 5-4 decision written by Chief Justice Roberts. At issue was the legality of ads by Wisconsin Right to Life, Inc. (WRTL). The ads, from 2004, noted that the Senate was refusing to grant an "up-or-down" vote on a number of nominees for the federal judiciary. After criticizing this tactic, the ads urged viewers to "contact [Wisconsin] Senators Feingold and Kohl and tell them to oppose the filibuster."

Although the right to this engage in this kind of speech is fundamental to our democracy, Congress outlawed it in the McCain-Feingold Act. Under that Act, "issue advocacy" of this kind becomes unlawful if it refers to a candidate in an election less than 30 days before that election. Here, Senator Feingold (co-author of the Act) was running in a primary (unopposed) within the 30-day "black out" period.

Jeff Hoard wonders why Americans are suspicious of Socialized Medicine. This article for the Heritage Foundation by Kevin Fleming may help him understand. (The Executive Summary of Fleming's heavily footnoted piece is here). Based in part on an analysis of the British and Canadian experiences, Fleming describes the ten things one can expect from a single-payer health system.

The first is reduced quality of care. For example, only three of 29 countries studied by the OECD had fewer practicing physicians than Britain. And in a study of cancer survival rates in 17 countries, Britain ranked near the bottom in lung cancer, colon cancer, and breast cancer survival. Britain has fewer medical oncologists than any country in Western Europe.

The second is periodic funding crises. Providing "free" medical care increases demand for it. When the government responds by restricting spending, as it has in Britain, patient demand far outstrips health care supply. As Fleming shows, this has been the pattern under Britain's single-payer system. Indeed, Britain has underinvested in health care during the past 30 years compared to the European average.

The third is politically driven inequalities. As Fleming documents, Canada has a three-tiered system. The wealthy jump queues by going to private clinics or to the U.S. for rapid treatment. The second tier consists of the well-informed and the aggressive, who push their way to the front of the line. This leaves behind the elderly, the poor, and the disenfranchised. Similarly, a 2002 investigation showed that in Britain more than 10,000 private-pay patients were given preference over National Health Service patients in Britain's best hospitals.

The fourth is labor strikes. Strikes are common in state-operated enterprises. The health care industry has proven to be no exception. CBC News reports that Canadians have "come to expect [strikes] as part of the negotiating process between doctors and the government." In the past three years, Canada has experienced major health care related work stoppages in New Brunswick, British Columbia, and Ontario.

The fifth is personnel shortages. According to Fleming, Canada has a serious shortage of physicians such that 18 percent of Canadians have trouble finding a doctor. Canada has 2.1 physicians per 1,000 people, compared to an OECD average of 2.8.

MSNBC reports on the campaign contributions of journalists working for mainstream media (MSM) outlets. Based on its review of public records of the Federal Election Commission, MSNBC learned that of the 144 journalists who made political contributions from 2004 through the start of the 2008 campaign, 125 journalists gave to Democrats and liberal causes. No one who has been paying attention will be surprised by these results.

Some MSM outlets, including the New York Times, now bar their reporters and editors (or in some cases all writers) from making these sorts of contributions. This strikes me as the worst of all possible worlds. First, journalists should be free to make political contributions as they fit. Second, a ban does not reduce the ideological bent reflected by the contributions; it merely removes some of the evidence. In the words of the New York Times, "Given the ease of Internet access to public records of campaign contributors, any political giving by a Times staff member would carry a great risk of feeding a false impression that the paper is taking sides." (Emphasis added).

So who wins and who loses if, as seems likely, Michael Bloomberg runs for president? I think David Frum has it mostly right. The losers will be Bloomberg himself (he'll probably waste about $100 million and end up with 2 or 3 percent of the vote) and the charities who likely will miss out on at some of the money Bloomberg devotes to his vanity campaign.

And the winners? That's easy. As Frum puts it, they are "the consultants, pollsters, and advertising directors who - having failed to get a piece of the action from the major presidential campaigns - will keep their children in private school and themselves in expensive timepieces with Bloomberg's money. Their eyes are already lighting up like London saleswomen when a bored Saudi princess wanders into their shop."

Frum thinks the Democrats will get some benefit from Bloomberg's campaign because his ads will hit the Republican nominee harder than his Democratic counterpart. I suspect that Bloomberg will have no effect on the outcome, but it's too early to assess this question with any confidence.

Kyle Smith of the New York Post writes a nice takedown of Michael Moore's new move "Sicko." The movie has not yet been released, so we don't yet know for sure whether, like previous Moore films, it will be premised on a lie. As Smith notes, "the central idea of 'Bowling for Columbine' -- that the killers were subconsciously driven to their actions by the presence of a weapons manufacturing plant in Littleton ---turned out to be not only conceptually insane but literally untrue." In fact, the plant did not make what Moore called "weapons of mass destruction" but rather space launch vehicles for TV satellites. Similarly, "Roger and Me" presented Moore as unable to secure an interview with the GM chief Roger Smith. But, this "was also a 90-minute lie: Moore did talk to Roger Smith, a fact revealed by Ralph Nader."

"Sicko" apparently is built around stories of people who got the run-around from insurance companies. Such stories should be enough easy to find, so perhaps Moore was able to resist his usual practice of making things up. However, as Smith's review shows, these sorts of anecdotes are beside the point when it comes to rational debate about health care, given the ease with which one can find similarly chilling anecdotes about the health case systems Moore extols -- those of Canada, France, and England. (For a great send-up of the Canadian system, watch the excellent film "Invasion of the Barbarians" by leftist director Denys Aracand).

Smith provides plenty of evidence that should make us pause before seeking to emulate the health care systems of Canada, France, and England (much less that of Cuba which also draws particular praise from Moore). That doesn't mean that our system can't be improved or even that, ultimately, we shouldn't borrow elements from the system of one or more of these countries. It just means that Moore's film, if Smith has desccribed it fairly, is irrelevant to serious debate about these matters.

Yesterday, I analyzed the Democratic presidential race in light of the latest polls. Today, I take a look at the Republican side of things.

Let's consider four new polls. A Rasmussen poll has Republicans divided as follows: Fred Thompson 28 percent; Rudy Giuliani 27 percent; John McCain 10 percent; Mitt Romney 10 percent. A Gallup Poll has it Giuliani 28, Thompson 19, McCain 18, Romney 7. A Cook/RT Strategies poll has it Giuliani 20, McCain 16, Thompson 15, Romney 7. Finally, a Mason-Dixon poll of likely voters in the Republican primary in South Carolina produced this result for that state: Thomson 25, Giuliani 21, Romney 11, McCain 7.

These polls suggest, first , that McCain is in big trouble. Once considered the frontrunner, he is now in third place, with his national support probably somewhere in the mid-teens. One of the candidates he's trailing hasn't even entered the race, and thus has run no ads and appeared in no debates. The South Carolina number, which may well be indicative of the rest of the south, must also be causing dread in the McCain camp. A month ago, polls showed him with at least twice that level of support in that state. It's pretty clear what has happened. Though some liberal critics mindlessly accused McCain of pandering to the conservative base this year, in truth McCain has been doing virtually no pandering, with immigration reform being the latest example and probably the last straw.

Ben Mankiewicz thinks those who defend President Bush from Mankiewicz's sort of criticism consider him an "intellectual snob." I sometimes defend Bush, but I do not consider Mankiewicz an intellectual snob.

For one thing, Mankiewicz claims to be criticizing Bush for "cataclysmic cerebral deficiencies" as evidenced by the president's use of the word "drug" instead of "dragged." This suggests that Mankiewicz either does not understand the meaning of the word "cataclysmic" or refuses to use it correctly. An intellectual would understand the meaning of the word and use it correctly.

In addition, we expect intellectuals to be able to make coherent arguments and to avoid obvious lapses of logic. In his periodic postings on this blog, Mankiewicz consistently has failed to meet this standard.

There are intellectuals who frequently criticize President Bush. Perhaps Mankiewicz hopes people will confuse him with one of them. It isn't likely, though. Name-calling is not the hallmark of an intellectual.

Today brings news of polls in the presidential races of both parties. This post will look at the Democratic side of things. Tomorrow, I'll talk about the Republican sweepstakes.

The news is good for Hillary Clinton and her supporters. A poll by Rasmussen (perhaps the most reliable of these outfits) for the period June 11-14 shows her with 38 percent of her party's support, compared to 27 percent for Obama, and 16 percent for Edwards. A Gallup poll taken during this period gives her basically the same lead over Obama. This poll, which included Al Gore, produced the following results: Clinton 33 percent; Obama 21 percent; Gore 18 percent; Edwards 11 percent. No poll taken in June that's listed by Real Clear Politics (which generally captures them all) shows Clinton with less than a double digit lead.

Jeff Hoard wonders how we're going to get to Mars, cure cancer, and control the weather if we're still debating about evolution. We'll probably do it (to the extent it can be done) the same way we got to the moon and cured polio at times when orthodox religious belief was more prevelent than it is now, through the combined efforts of religious believers and non-believers. We won't do it though the efforts of folks who are debating about evolution, or debating about the debate, as Jeff is.

Meanwhile, those looking for a serious discussion of the relationship between religion and science can consult this piece by Albert Einstein on the subject.