616 wolves steal the attention away...

... from 1 trillion dollars.

In case you hadn't heard, last night the Senate agreed to burden future generations with an irreparable and ill-advised debt.  In order to do so, they needed the help of three Republicans who turned their back on their party, principles and, more significantly, common sense.

Sen. Olympia Snowe, Sen. Susan Collins and Sen. Arlen Specter should all face a strong challenge in Republican primaries for this betrayal.

In addition to my extreme frustration that Congress cannot seem to wait more than 18 days until they spend $780 billion dollars - similar to a kid running to the candy shop after they've received their allowance - is that the media is concerned primarily with another tragedy: wolves.

Gov. Sarah Palin - of whom I am no staunch supporter - is under attack because she supports allowing the killing of wolves from airplanes and helicopters.  While that at first read may sound like a crazy idea, it is actually very practical for Alaska.  Many of Alaska's residents and Native populations rely on Caribou and Moose for sustenance. The large number of wolves in these areas diminishes the population of these creatures and the only way to prevent sources of food from dying (and not in the good way) is to eliminate the predators. The only way to eliminate wolves over such a large expanse of land - Alaska is very, very large - is to fly to the wolves.  Hence, hunting from the air is an appropriate solution to this very real problem.

In a very real sense, killing wolves from the air saves human lives.  In light of all of this, Gov. Palin continued the policies of former Alaskan Governors, which allowed aerial hunting, and extended them by providing a $150 bounty for killing vicious predators.

In response, Ashley Judd - actor, sometime political activist, and purported public policy mastermind - released the following ad:

Let's be brutally honest for a moment.  Wolves are vicious creatures. They are described as the "apex predator" in their environment and, where they dwell near human beings, attacks on people - particularly children - are not uncommon.  This issue is not about hunting down Bambi from a Huey. If it were, I might be more sympathetic to Ms. Judd's concerns. However, we are not talking Bambi here. The major difficulty for me is that, aside from using Gov. Palin as punching bag to make your point, there are far bigger fish to fry in this world than the killing of 600 wolves a year.

Elizabeth Hasselbeck started discussing this issue on The View, defending Palin.  She immediately asks why doesn't Ashley Judd care about the far larger number of Abortions in this country?  The ladies of The View jumped all over for this, exclaiming, "there she goes again!" and "Really!?!" However, they never really addressed her point... (As a side note, this again points to the need for Conservatives to address issues without reference to social hot topics. Had Elizabeth asked, "Why isn't Ms. Judd concerned about the starving children in Africa?" the point would have better made).  The point is there are much larger issues than the killing of Wolves for the national media to address. Notably, the $3,000 dollars in debt that was passed on to each American citizen by the Federal government yesterday.  In times of crisis and government action, the last thing Larry King Live, The View and Anderson Cooper 360 should be focused on is an Alaskan statute that has been on the books for years.