2 Political Junkies:

"Just when you thought they couldn't go any lower ... there's this sign from [Thursday's] GOP anti-health care rally." [Posted is a picture of a pile of bodies.] "If you can't tell, it reads: 'National Socialist Health Care: Dachau, Germany -- 1945.' Because trying to expand health-care coverage for millions of uninsured Americans is exactly like the mass murder of Jews by Nazis. I mean anyone can see that, right?

"One might be predisposed to assume that this banner was the work of someone with a long history of mental problems except for the fact that we know that many attending this rally have been fed a steady diet of outrageous propaganda warning them of death panels, government as the enemy and a president who is supposedly an illegitimate foreign-born usurper and undercover Muslim terrorist bent on destroying the country."

The Allegheny Institute takes issue with an AFL-CIO member who defended the use of "project labor agreements" and wrote in a local letter to the editor, "If anyone ... wants to examine why this nation has such a problem with illegal immigrants, look no further than an open-shop construction market."

The Institute: "What the author fails to mention is that the huge majority of politicians supported by unions are Democrats, the party heavily in favor of amnesty and a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. Indeed, many top-level union leaders are on board with the amnesty and citizenship plan in the hope that the new citizens will become dues-paying union members. One easily predictable consequence of a blanket amnesty program will be a flood of new illegals looking for work and driving down wages in the United States. How will that promote the welfare of union members?"

Michael T. Klare at Tomdispatch.com describes "six signs that the American empire is coming to an early end," which include the recent decision by G-20 leaders in Pittsburgh to make the G-20, as opposed to the mostly Western G-8 countries, pre-eminent in managing world affairs. Among other signs: Economic rivals are talking about replacing the dollar as the world's reserve currency, the U.S. government is having trouble gaining support for sanctions to discourage Iran's development of nuclear weapons and the International Olympic Committee rejected Chicago's bid to host the next summer games.

The Pittsburgh Comet dreams ... "of the day we will have at least one daily half-hour's worth of television programming dedicated to local news, somewhere on the dial. Not what we have now -- not crime, weather, sports and pap. I dream of a program where unless there is a devastating tragedy on the order of Stanton Heights, an historic blizzard or an actual championship, then the first story by default will always concern City Hall. ... And if there still isn't enough news to fill that measly one half hour, I want news analysts and competing pundits brought in to talk about how we ought to be thinking about what was just discussed during the first 15 minutes."

Robert Weissberg at MindingTheCampus.com asks: "How is the university ... with its rampant anti-Americanism, anti-intellectualism, muddle-brained identity politics, hostility to the unvarnished truth and all the rest to be re-conquered and restored to sanity?"

Among Mr. Weissberg's suggestions: 1) "guerilla warfare" to expose leftist faculty; 2) "monastery construction" to create "campus sanctuaries promoting solid, traditional education, e.g., Princeton's Madison Center," and 3) "CIA-style covert funding" such as that funneled to anti-communist groups who helped bring down the Iron Curtain.

Guy Sorman in City Journal reports: "This summer, a woman of Arab descent tried to enter a Paris swimming pool wearing a head-to-toe black swimsuit dubbed a 'burqini' and was expelled. The episode rekindled the 'veil controversy' of 2005, when the French Parliament ... unanimously passed a law forbidding students to wear any 'intrusive religious signs' in schools. The Jewish yarmulke and the Christian cross were tolerated, if kept small and discreet, but not the Islamic veil -- which was the law's real focus. The veil law, a not-so-subtle attempt to prevent the Islamization of France, implied that French society had become besieged by its 4 or 5 million Muslims, and observers might draw the same conclusion from the burqini incident ... "

Cartoonist Rob Rogers does "Rob's Rough," an early look at his work and his creative process, exclusively at PG+, a members-only web site of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.