The Shiawasee County, Michigan Argus-Press reports that being the victim of international disapprobation has brought a Michigan welfare mom 15 minutes of fame.

An Owosso (Michigan) woman says she was recently denied permission to cross the Canadian border because she is on welfare.

Rose Kelley, 25, said she was trying to visit friends and family who live in Canada, but ran into many complications on the way.

She arrived at the Sarnia, Ontario, border May 1 with her children Xander, 5, and Onyx, 1. When she reached the customs and immigration office she was given a list of items she needed to cross the border – some of which included: evidence of citizenship, financial support, financial assistance, confirmed means of departure, and more. …

Because of this, she had to travel back to Owosso to get the necessary papers and then return May 3.

“I brought everything. My entire folder had every piece of paperwork that they could ask for,” Kelley said

However, she was once again denied entry.

“They said I don’t make enough money and people on welfare shouldn’t take a vacation,” said Kelley, a single mother who has been on assistance for five years. “I was told that I wouldn’t be allowed to cross the border until my life ‘drastically changed.’”

She said she was stunned by the events. …

Because of the incident, Kelley said she filed a discrimination complaint with the agency Tuesday, but has heard no response yet.

Dozens of outraged liberal Canadian readers expressed indignation, reported the Toronto Sun, which also quoted Ms. Kelley observing indignantly:

It has been a terrible ordeal,” Kelley, 25, of Owosso, Mich., said of last Sunday’s trip to the Sarnia border crossing where she was turned back. “I have family and friends over there and I want to visit them.” …

“This trip has been a big ordeal for me and my children,” Kelley said yesterday. “I have never done anything wrong and have a squeaky clean criminal record.”

Amusingly, both American and Canadian press accounts strike poses of open-mouthed astonishment at the man-bites-dog bizarreness of those Canadian Border Service Agents actually looking upon being on welfare as a discreditable status.

Peter J. Wirs points out that the DNC Rules Committee’s artificial assignment of Michigan delegate votes to Barack Obama (who did not even run in that state’s primary) may not be as easy to pull off as the power brokers in that party’s back room supposed.

The democrat bosses forgot that federal election law exists. Hillary’s side has recourse, and it looks like Arlen Specter may be preparing to give her a hand.

This past Saturday, the Democratic National Committee Rules Committee voted, as many anticipated, on seating the Florida and Michigan Democratic delegates with only half of vote. Moreover, 59 Michigan delegates were awarded to Barak Obama, notwithstanding he was not on the January 15 Michigan primary ballot. As Clinton adviser and Rules committee member Harold Ickes asserted, the outcome for Michigan was a hijacking of voters’ intent because it assigned delegates to Mr. Obama even though he did not win them.

As we reported last week, Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA), the former chairman and now ranking minority member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, is seriously evaluating whether he should call for Congressional hearings. …

Specter, probably one of the most legally astute of GOP Senators, contends the DNC is violating one of the most fundamental of all constitutional rules, that once a vote is cast it must be counted. This constitutional principle, pronounced by the United States Supreme Court since Ex parte Yarborough (1884) and reiterated as recently as Gray v. Sanders (1963), is simply beyond reproach. This rock-bottom constitutional demand applies to primaries as well as general elections. …

No one is disputing the Democrats have every right to set what its rules are and how its delegates are to be selected.

But once the Democrats evoke the state’s machinery in order to hold a public primary, a bright line is crossed. As the Supreme Court in Gray v. Saunders observed state regulated party primaries “show that the State . . . collaborates in the conduct of the primary, and puts its power behind the rules of the party. It adopts the primary as a part of the public election machinery. The exclusions of voters made by the party by the primary rules become exclusions enforced by the State.” Grey v. Saunders went on to assert that “state regulation of this preliminary phase of the election process makes it state action.”

The issue isn’t that the DNC is asserting some “for members only” admission to a clubhouse. The issue is that the Great States of Florida and Michigan held primaries, which although concerning one or another of our two major political parties, is part of the electoral process. These primaries weren’t private affairs. They weren’t even party affairs. They were official state actions. The DNC was acting by virtue of the power delegated to it by the legislatures of both Florida and Michigan. The taxpayers of both Florida and Michigan, not the DNC, paid for the primaries. If the DNC wants to exclude voters, or count only half of the votes cast, or award Obama delegates he did not win, then they should hold private affairs (like that San Francisco cocktail reception where Obama asserts most of us are bitter by virtue of believing in God). Let them sell tickets and pay for the events themselves. …

when I go to the polls to vote, I don’t want someone to cancel or dilute my vote. I expect my vote to be count as one vote, nothing more, nothing less.

Politico describes democrat party efforts at negotiating a compromise between the Clinton and the Obama camps on the issue of the seating of delegations from Michigan and Florida.

Those people who believe all problems have solutions may be unfamiliar with the inner workings of the Democratic Party.

On Saturday, the party’s Rules and Bylaws Committee will try to solve a big problem, in order to avoid a huge problem in order to prevent a train wreck.

The big problem is what to do about Michigan and Florida, two states stripped last year of their delegates to the Democratic National Convention because both broke party rules and moved their primaries up too early in the election year.

The rules committee will try to work out a compromise Saturday to try to seat those states in some form or fashion. It will be difficult, and the 30 members of the committee, who come from all over the nation, have been warned to keep their hotel rooms Saturday night, because the meeting may go into Sunday.

The huge problem is what happens if one side or another does not like the rules committee’s compromise. In that case, the controversy would go to the 186-member Credentials Committee, which will convene in July or August.

And if that happens, the party will be presented with a possible train wreck: Whatever the Credentials Committee decides will have to be voted on by the Convention in late August as its first order of business. And this could create what the media might love but the party dreads: a floor fight in Denver.

Read the whole thing.

This is probably the battle which will decide the nomination. Whoever controls the credentials committee will have the key to securing the nomination.

Hillary is refusing to lie down, and has –as was predicted– finally played the Florida and Michigan card. After all, as we remember from 2000, counting every vote is vitally important to democrats.

Hoist by their own petard, the democrat party left is responding this morning in characteristic fashion to Hillary’s efforts to thwart their desires… by having a cow.

Andrew Sullivan does a particularly nice job of frothing.

The Clintons know no respect for rules or propriety or restraint in the pursuit of power. But Clinton’s latest speech in Florida should cause even veteran Clinton-hating jaws to drop some more….

How do you respond to a sociopath like this? She agreed that Michigan and Florida should be punished for moving up their primaries. Obama took his name off the ballot in deference to their agreement and the rules of the party. That he should now be punished for playing by the rules and she should be rewarded for skirting them is unconscionable.

I think she has now made it very important that Obama not ask her to be the veep. The way she is losing is so ugly, so feckless, so riddled with narcissism and pathology that this kind of person should never be a heartbeat away from the presidency.

Hillary is sitting pretty, armed with the argument possessing the greatest emotive force, and as ABC NEWS reports, she is not afraid to use it.

Sen. Hillary Clinton continued to push her popular vote argument. As an example, Clinton mentioned what happened in the elections in Zimbabwe to illustrate what can happen when the popular vote is not observed.

Speaking in Sunrise, Fla., Clinton said: “You heard Diana talk about coming from a country where votes don’t count. People go through the motions of an election only to have it discarded and disregarded. We’re seeing that right now in Zimbabwe — tragically an election was held, the president lost, they refused to abide by the will of the people. So we can never take for granted our precious right to vote.”

Clinton gave an abreviated version of her earlier speech, but made her argument for the popular vote to be the most important factor in this election again.

“Many of us believe that the candidate who got fewer votes was inaugurated president (in 2000),” Clinton said. “And we know that of all states, this state should have extra attention to make sure your votes are counted.”

How dare she! bleats Newsweek’s Jonathan Chait:

Hillary Clinton’s rhetoric today about counting the results in Florida and Michigan is simply incredible. Her speech compares discounting the Florida and Michigan primaries to vote suppression and slavery. …

They supported this “disenfranchisement.” Here’s a New York Times story from last fall, headlined, “Clinton, Obama and Edwards Join Pledge to Avoid Defiant States.”

Moreover, it’s obviously true that Obama not campaigning, organizing, or advertizing in those states hurt him, and helped the more familiar candidate in Clinton. She decided to campaign to change the rules only after it became her interest to do so.

This gambit by Clinton is simply an attempt to steal the nomination. It’s obviously not going to work, because Democratic superdelegates don’t want to commit suicide. But this episode is very revealing about Clinton’s character. I try not to make moralistic characterological judgments about politicians, because all politicians compromise their ideals in the pursuit of power. There are no angels in this business. Clinton’s gambit, however, truly is breathtaking.

If she’s consciously lying, it’s a shockingly cynical move. I don’t think she’s lying. I think she’s so convinced of her own morality and historical importance that she can whip herself into a moralistic fervor to support nearly any position that might benefit her, however crass and sleazy. It’s not just that she’s convinced herself it’s okay to try to steal the nomination, she has also appropriated the most sacred legacies of liberalism for her effort to do so. She is proving herself temperamentally unfit for the presidency.

It’s a pretty darn depressing election, what with no actual Republican running. At least we are getting some entertainment out of it, as the Clintons and their party’s leftwing base do the Vote Count two-step, hopping back and forth on “counting every vote” depending on exactly who is benefiting.

The nutroots left is adding another variation to its performance: the Clinton two-step. What fun it is to see the MoveOn.Org crowd which so passionately defended the Clintons through scandal after scandal, and then through Monica-gate and Impeachment, suddenly awake and discover the Clinton’s dark side.

We may have tragedy in November, but we’ve got comedy today.

Harold Ickes explains to the Politico that the Clinton camp knows where it can get some reinforcements.

The campaign of Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) has begun urging party officials and news organizations to include the disputed Florida and Michigan delegations when figuring the number of delegates needed to win the nomination.

That unorthodox approach could put her in striking distance of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) over the next month.

Harold Ickes, Clinton’s chief delegate strategist, said in a telephone interview that the senator is likely to finish the primary and caucus season on June 3 “substantially less than 100 delegates behind” Obama’s total if those two states are included.

“We don’t believe that this party is going to go forward into a presidential race without seating both Florida and Michigan,” Ickes said.

But the Democratic National Committee had declared those delegates should not be counted as punishments to the states for moving their contests so soon in the process.

So Clinton’s argument depends on the actions of the party’s Rules and Bylaws Committee when it meets May 31 to consider pro-Clinton challenges that would seat those delegations.

Clinton’s new magic number to clinch the nomination is 2,209 delegates, compared to the 2,025 that would be needed without Florida and Michigan.

“The Obama people keep talking about 2,025, which implies they don’t intend to seat Florida and Michigan,” Ickes said. “We think that’s a mistake on the part of the party – it’s foolish.”

Maureen Dowd is shocked at what a cynical politician that once sweet young Hillary has become. How dare she stand in the Left’s way?

heaven help the Democrats as they try to shake off Hillary. On top of her inane vows to obliterate Iran, OPEC and the summer gas tax, she plans “a nuclear option” during her Shermanesque march to Denver. Tom Edsall reported on The Huffington Post that the Hillaryites will try, at a May 31 meeting of the Democratic Rules and Bylaws Committee, to renege on their word and get the Michigan and Florida delegations seated. Addressing supporters here, she urged the counting of the Florida and Michigan votes, noting “it would be a little strange to have a nominee chosen by 48 states.”

“It’s full speed onto the White House,” she said. …

It’s hard to believe that this Hillary is the same Wellesley girl who said she yearned for a more “ecstatic and penetrating mode of living.” What would that young Hillary — who volunteered on Gene McCarthy’s anti-war campaign; who cried the day Martin Luther King Jr. was killed; who referred to some of her “smorgasbord of personalities” in a 1967 letter to a friend as an “alienated academic,” and an “involved pseudo-hippie”; who once returned a bottle of perfume after feeling guilty about the poverty around her — think of this shape-shifting, cynical Hillary?

She’s so at odds with who she used to be, even in the Senate, that if she were to get elected, who would voters be electing?

Obama is like her idealistic, somewhat naïve self before the world launched 1,000 attacks against her, turning her into the hard-bitten, driven politician who has launched 1,000 attacks against Obama.

As she makes a last frenzied and likely futile attempt to crush the butterfly, it’s as though she’s crushing the remnants of her own girlish innocence.

Officer James Kellett of Carrolton Township, Michigan is clearly a good man to have around around in an emergency, as the Associated Press reports.

Officer James Kellett said a skunk whose head was stuck in an empty salad dressing jar wandered into the police station’s parking lot Thursday in Carrollton Township, near Saginaw and about 80 miles north of Detroit.

Kellett wanted to serve and protect the white-striped weasel, but wasn’t interested in any resistance — spray or otherwise. So he grabbed a BB gun used in hunters’ safety courses and shot at the jar from about 40 feet.

The shots cracked and shattered the jar, leaving a glass collar around the skunk’s neck. With its head free, the skunk ran off.

“I didn’t want to use deadly force, and it is a residential area,” Kellett told The Saginaw News. “The way he was when he took off, he was able to eat, breathe and spray — and do anything else skunks like to do.”

Kellett didn’t get much in the way of gratitude, but he’s grateful the skunk didn’t spray. And the makers of T. Marzetti’s salad dressing are sending the officer coupons good for free dressing as a reward.

There is a Japanese saying, Katsujin-ken Satsujin-to “The sword which kills is also the sword which gives life.”

Hat tip to Frank A. Dobbs.