“Twelve houses between them, two rich guys, it’s almost like shooting fish in a bucket,” said Ed Rollins, a Republican strategist who led Huckabee's presidential campaign this year.

What the Speaker had to say about theologians and their positions regarding abortion was not only misinformed; it was also, and especially, utterly incredible in this day and age.

In simplest terms, they are human beings with an inalienable right to live, a right that the Speaker of the House of Representatives is bound to defend at all costs for the most basic of ethical reasons. They are not parts of their mothers, and what they are depends not at all upon the opinions of theologians of any faith. Anyone who dares to defend that they may be legitimately killed because another human being “chooses” to do so or for any other equally ridiculous reason should not be providing leadership in a civilized democracy worthy of the name.

No commentary on Joe Biden's speech tonight (transcript here) would be complete without reference to this line: 

These times require more than a good soldier. They require a wise leader.

To me, at least, this sounds more than a bit dismissive of all the "good soldiers" whose bloodshed and sacrifice ensure that supposed "wise leaders" have the opportunity to cogitate in safety and bloviate at length.  What's more, it's pretty hard to cast John McCain as nothing more than a "good soldier" when the contrast -- the "wise leader" -- is supposed to be Barack Obama.

Here, in italics, is all Joe Biden could find to say about Barack's service in the US Senate:

And when he came to Washington, when he came to Washington, John and I watched with amazement how he hit the ground running, leading the fight to pass the most sweeping ethics reform in a generation.

[Note: This is simply a prevarication, as Hugh Hewitt discusses in depth here].

He reached across party lines to pass a law that helped keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists.  

[Note: The careful wording is for a reason.  Barack actually was allowed essentially to substitute his name as the lead Democratic sponsor to a longstanding bipartisan effort to reduce nuclear stockpiles.  As Senate Lugar's contemporaneous press release notes, "The Lugar-Obama initiative is modeled after the Nunn-Lugar program that focuses on weapons of mass destruction in the former Soviet Union. Lugar and former Senator Sam Nunn (D-GA) authored the program in 1991."

And then he moved Congress and the president to give our wonderful wounded warriors the care and dignity they deserve.

[Note: Of course, Obama voted against funding those same "wonderful"  warriors on the battlefield in 2007 because there wasn't a timeline for withdrawal].

And there you have it, folks.  This is all that his own vice president can find to say about the sum total of legislative accomplishments of the Democrat nominee for President.

When Joe Biden's brother and son wanted to buy a hedge fund company two years ago, they turned for financing to a law firm that had lobbied the Delaware senator's office on an important piece of business in Congress -- and in fact had recently benefited from his vote. The firm promised James and Hunter Biden that it would invest $2 million, and quickly delivered half of it.

That deal eventually fell through and the money was returned. But it highlighted the close ties that Joe Biden and his family have developed with SimmonsCooper, an Illinois law firm that specializes in asbestos litigation -- a multimillion-dollar line of business that was under threat in Congress.
In addition to providing financing for the hedge fund deal, SimmonsCooper picked the law firm of another of Biden's sons, Beau, to work with it on dozens of asbestos cases in Delaware. "It was only natural that we worked with my friend Beau Biden and his firm," said Jeffrey Cooper, former managing partner of SimmonsCooper.