Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's announcement of her resignation cannot be read in terms of the conventional wisdom of politics - i.e. that she's getting out ahead of some damaging political revelation she knows is right around the corner, she's fed up with the constant personal attacks on her and her family, or she's running for president in 2012 and wants to be free of the constraints of office.
A close reading of her actual words in her announcement reveals otherwise. The key fact about Palin is that she is not a conventional politician. She actually means what she says, which is why her statement must be read in light of that fact, not that she has ulterior motives. Her complete statement was posted on her official web site and it bears serious study, particularly this passage:
"Political operatives descended on Alaska last August, digging for dirt. The ethics law I championed became their weapon of choice. Over the past nine months I've been accused of all sorts of frivolous ethics violations – such as holding a fish in a photograph, wearing a jacket with a logo on it, and answering reporters’ questions.
"Every one – all 15 of the ethics complaints have been dismissed. We’ve won! But it hasn't been cheap - the State has wasted thousands of hours of your time and shelled out some two million of your dollars to respond to...
Quick, how many "czars" do you think President Obama has appointed since becoming president? Eight? A dozen? Guess again. Try 31, at least according to Taxpayers for Common Sense, which actually counted them.
Washington czars are not new, President Ronald Reagan had one in "White House drug czar" Bill Bennett. But Obama has taken the practice to a new high, effectively creating nearly three dozen.
Taxpayers for Common Sense describes the growing czar ranks:
"By our count there are at least 31 active Czars (see our list here), giving the current administration more Czars than Imperial Russia had in its history. We have a Mideast Peace Czar and a Mideast Policy Czar, a Sudan Czar and aGuantanamo Closure Czar. There’s a Green Jobs Czar, a Pay Czar and anEnergy Czar, an Urban Affairs Czar, Technology Czar, and even a Great Lakes Czar. Thankfully, there’s also an Information Czar."
And TCS adds:
"As they say, too much of a good thing can be a bad thing. When you look at the Czar proliferation (there’s a WMD Czar, too), you have to scratch your head and ask if perhaps we should re-think this approach. Instead of constantly creating new positions to coordinate our government's activities, might it make more sense to figure out how to make the existing structure perform better for the taxpayer?"
You can read the full...
Bertha Lewis, national president of the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (ACORN), issued a news release yesterday repeating a claim she has previously made that "every 13 seconds another American family loses its home."
Curious about how that figure was calculated, I called the contact person on the release, Austin King, director of the ACORN Financial Justice Center. "Oh, we got that figure from the Center for Responsible Lending," he said. "We have been using that figure for about five months now."
When asked if he had double-checked the accuracy of the figure, King said "we've ball-parked it, but I didn't do the numbers. They maybe [CRL] did some different benchmarks."
So, I pointed out to King that if a home is lost every 13 seconds, there would have to be at least 2.42 million homes lost in a year. But, according to Business Week, only about one million homes were lost in 2008.
"Well, we're talking about the legal loss of your home, which varies from one state to another. There were about 2.3 million foreclosures started last year," King said. He said he didn't know how many of those foreclosures were completed or how many did not result in a family losing its home.
"Maybe we should be more careful and have Bertha say 'every 13 seconds a family is foreclosed," he said.
Sure enough, a...
Earlier this week in an editorial entitled "Washington's spending corruption is a bipartisan rot," we took to task Rep. James Oberstar, D-MN, the chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, along with Rep. John Mica, R-FL, the ranking minority member, for their collaboration in crafting a $500 billion transportation spending bill. We also included in that critique Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-OR, and Rep. John Duncan, R-TN, chairman and ranking minority member, respectively of a key subcommittee of that panel.
In the editorial, we noted, based upon calculations by Taxpayers for Common Sense, that "the bill includes nearly 12,000 earmarks, together worth more than $19 billion."
We have since received a call from Jim Berard, communications director for the committee, with some additional information. In fact, there are zero earmarks in the bill now before the committee, Berard said. The bill will include earmarks later this summer after it finishes markup, but as of now it has no earmarks.
Berard said the committee has received 6,686 requests for funding for projects - i.e. earmarks - from 405 members of the House, worth a total of $136 billion. "There won't be nearly that many in the final bill," Berard said. The posted information on each earmark will include the amount sought, a statement from the requesting member that he or...
Alan Carlin, the senior EPA research analyst who authored a study critical of global warming that was suppressed by agency officials, has broken his silence and spoken on Fox News about his situation. Carlin told "Fox & Friends" Steve Ducy and Gretchen Carlson that his most important conclusion in the study was that the U.S. should not rely upon recommendations of the UN in making policy decisions regarding global warming.
"The most important conclusion, in my view, was that EPA needed to look at the science behind global warming and not depend upon reports issued by the United Nations, which is what they were thinking of doing and in fact have done," Carlin said.
Asked what happened to his study once it was completed, Carlin said "my supervisors decided not to forward it to the group within EPA who had the responsibility for preparing an overall report which would guide EPA on whether to find that the emission of global warming gases would be something that EPA should regulate."
You can watch entire interview with Carlin here.
Carlin has been at EPA for 38 years and until the Fox interview was telling reporters seeking interviews that he was instructed by EPA officials not to speak with them. He almost certainly risks retalitation by EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and other Obama appointees within the agency.
There are federal laws...
Could somebody please explain the difference between people on the Right calling the eight GOP congressmen who voted for the Obama-Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade anti-global warming energy bill "cap and traitors" and the far lefties at Moveon.org calling Gen. David Petraeus "General Betrayus"?
Sorry, folks, but, as much as I agree this bill is a disaster for America, calling these eight RINOs "traitors" is beyond the line. Here's why: The word "traitor" has specific reference to national loyalty. Benedict Arnold was a traitor, as were spies like John Walker, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, and Aldrich Hazen Ames. The traditional penalty for treason is death, though in recent decades that sentence has been all but forgotten in the U.S., though not in other nations.
When somebody promises you they will take a certain course of action not involving national loyalty, but then does another, they are a rat, a double-crosser, or a jerk, but they are not a traitor because national security is not jeopardized by their failure to do what they promised to do. The Obama-Waxman-Markey bill will certainly burden the U.S. economy, but it won't destroy it. Thus, referring to the eight GOP members who voted for the bill is unjustified.
But isn't "cap and traitor" simply an acceptable rhetorical device whereas "General Betrayus" is...
Lots of independent investigative journalism outfits focused on state and local issues are springing up across the country. One of the best is Texas Watchdog, led by Trent Siebert, a former Nashville Tennessean investigative reporter.
Siebert and a handful of similarly experienced investigative journalists have been at it for three years uncovering all kinds of great stories from one end of Texas to the other. In recent months, they've been paying particular attention to the strange circumstances surrounding the retirement of the Houston Airport System's chief executive.
This looks increasingly like one of those "ball of string stories," but instead of the ball getting smaller as you pull on the string, it keeps getting bigger and bigger as more and more layers of the story are exposed. Check out Texas Watchdog because it is showing the way for independent, online investigative journalism....
Journalism lost one of its great ones this weekend with the passing of Mary Lou Forbes, 83, after a brief battle with cancer. She was Commentary Editor of The Washington Times from its earliest days and was one of a core group of former Washington Star newsroom characters who helped launch the upstart conservative daily.
Forbes was among the first women to succeed at the highest levels of news reporting and commentary journalism, winning a Pulitzer Prize in 1959 for her reportage in covering the civil rights struggle in Virginia. She also tutored the early careers of folks like Carl Bernstein, and created a prize-winning multiple-page commentary section, which helped the Times challenge the hegemony of The Washington Post and launched the career of America's most widely read columnist, Cal Thomas.
When I joined the reporting staff of the Times in 1985, I worked for Woody West, then the managing editor, and thus never had the opportunity of working with Mary Lou. But in almost three decades in Washington, D.C., I have never heard a single negative word about her or the quality of her work.
Woody and Mary Lou were the heart of the Star crowd at the Times and were equally adept at detecting BS, regardless of its source. They represented American journalism at its best. I quickly developed an immense and enduring respect for these two and I shall always lament the loss of...
Remember actress Janeane Garafaolo's characterization of the Tea Party Patriots as "racists straight up" back in April? The Dallas Tea Party bunch invited Garafaolo to join them in May to see what they were really about, but the leftist actress was no where to be seen. Now, the Tea Party Patriots have cut an excellent YouTube video to renew their invitation to Garafaolo this time to join them to celebrate American independence on July...
Taxpayers are becoming increasingly militant as they learn more about what is being done in their name in the nation's capitol by the White House and Congress. And the people doing it to them seem to be either determined to avoid explaining themselves, or quite willing to assault those who dare to question them.
For the former, see this video of a recent rally of patriotic constituents who tried to confront Rep. Tim Bishop, D-NY. For the latter, check out this video of Rep. Alan Grayson, D-FL, stiff-arming of a politically aware citizen with a camera and a question. Republicans who assume they are exempt from such irate citizens should think very carefully before acting on such a tenuous assumption.
These are not isolated incidents. The seething anger and growing militancy of otherwise normal, law-abiding tax-payers is perhaps the most under-reported political story of the year.
HT: Instapundit.com....
The Center for Data Analysis (CDA) at The Heritage Foundation has conducted an econometric model study on the likely impact on major sectors of the U.S. economy if the Obama-Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade anti-global warming energy bill being voted on in the House of Representatives today ultimately becomes law.
On average, the measure would cost more than 50,000 jobs annually just in the transportation equipment segment of the economy. Transporation equipment sounds like a pretty dull area, but it actually is among the most dynamic sectors of the economy because it includes the car and truck industries, aircraft, ships, trains, motorcycles and bicycles.
For data on other major sectors, see: Chemicals, wood products, machinery, paper, plastics and rubber, electrical equipment and appliances, construction, and manufacturing.
The CDA calculations are based on data derived from the Global Insight econometric model of the U.S. economy....
With a vote likely to be taken today in the House of Representatives on the Obama-Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade anti-global warming energy bill, a new survey of African-Americans finds significant concerns that the measure will have a disproportionately harmful impact on Blacks.
The survey was conducted for the National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR) by the Wilson Research Strategies firm and has a margin of error of +/- 3.4 percent. The survey can be found here.
Among the findings, according to NCPPR:
* 38% believe job losses from climate change legislation would be felt most strongly in the black community. 7% believe job losses would fall most on Hispanics and 2% on whites;
* 56% believe Washington policymakers have failed to adequately consider economic and quality of life concerns of the black community when addressing climate issues;
* 52% of respondents don't want to pay more for gasoline or electricity to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. 73% are unwilling to pay more than 50 cents more for a gallon of gas; 76% are unwilling to pay more than $50 more per year for electricity;
* Black Americans are virtually deadlocked on plans to reduce emissions if it would increase prices and unemployment. 44% opposed reductions under these circumstances, 45% supported them.
* 76% want Congress to make economic recovery the top priority....
There are three kinds of liars - liars, damned liars and statisticians, right?
Well, for nearly a decade, I have opened my Database 101, Computer-Assisted Research and Reporting (CARR) boot camps at the National Press Club for journalists and bloggers with a description of two of my dreams.
The first is that the day will soon come when all journalists and bloggers are as comfortable using spreadsheets and databases as they are now with dictionaries and spell-check. The second is that the day will soon come when every time a public official, think tank spokesman or individual expert claims to have a study proving X, the first question they will hear from a journalist or blogger is "May I see your datasets?"
Knowing somebody will look at your numbers and be able to point it out if you have manipulated them improperly should be a powerful disincentive to making insupportable public policy claims based on statistically flawed studies. Now, the Beacon Hill Institute at Suffolk University has just provided a sterling illustraton of that dream's immediate relevance.
As Congress debates this week the Obama-Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade anti-global warming bill, its advocates frequently claim that moving to alternative energy sources will create legions of new "green jobs." Those claims are often backed by reference to one or more of a trio of supposedly...
This will probably come as a shock to anybody who has read Robert Penn Warren's "All the King's Men," or who has even the mos passing familiarity with Louisiana politics, but the Bayou State ranks on top of the Center for Public Integrity's latest compilation of state legislative financial disclosure requirements.
Go here for CPI's color-coded inter-active map that provides info on how all 50 states compare. Joining Louisiana with a grade of A and ranking second is Washington state, while Hawaii is third and the only other state getting the top grade. States getting a B include Texas, Alaska, Arizona and Georgia.
Way down in the ranking are Maryland and Virginia, with the former getting a D and ranking 23rd and the latter getting an F, with a rank of 31. The worst states in the nation for financial disclosure of state legislators are Idaho, Vermont and Michigan. Other states getting the F include: Nevada, Montano, Wyoming, Utah, North Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Pennsylvanis, West Virginia, Tennessee, New Hampshire and Maine.
The rankings are based on a 43-question measurement used by CPI to determine what requirements apply to state legislators. The measures range from employment and corporate positions held to whether the disclosures are made publicly available and whether such availability is via the Internet....
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has vowed to bring the Obama-Waxman-Markey (OWM) anti-global warming cap-and-trade energy bill to the floor for a final vote Friday, which raises an interesting question: How much money will Pelosi make if the measure becomes law, as seems quite likely?
Pelosi, of course, is not the only member of Congress to own significant shares of energy companies. Senators and representatives from all over the country do, not just the "oilies" from energy states like Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana.
But as House Speaker, Pelosi's ownership of an unknown number of shares in the Clean Energy Fuels Corp. (CLNE) valued at between $15,000 and $50,000, may deserve particular attention.
Shares of CLNE have gone up and down in value in recent years, thanks to the fluctuations in the price of natural gas and changes in the oil industry worldwide. And a Pelosi spokesman told The Washington Examiner last year that her husband takes care of their stock portfolio, so she has no knowledge of how any of her family investments will be affected by any particular piece of legislation before Congress.
Another prominent public figure with an interest in OWM is CLNE's major domo, T. Boone Pickens, best known of late as a wind-energy investor and the man behind the largest-ever single donation to a state university, $165 million to Oklahoma State University for its...
Another myth bites the dust, as a new study published today by the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER) finds that "the majority of Americans are not struggling with persistent credit card debt."
The study was done by Polina Vlasenko, Ph.D., a research fellow at the Great Barrington, Massachusetts-based think tank. Vlasenko reviewed data drawn from the Federal Reserve's Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) for the years 1989 to 2007. The Fed updates the SCF every three years.
Vlasenko found that 27 percent of U.S. families have no credit or charge cards at all, and among those that do, the median number of cards was only two. The latter figure was unchanged from 1989.
The percentage of families with outstanding balances has increased since 1989, but at a dramatically slower pace than access to credit cards. The latter increased three times faster than the rate of increase in unpaid balances, according to Vlasenko. The median unpaid balance was $3,000.
Nearly half, 42 percent, of families with credit cards had no unpaid balance after settling their most recent monthly bill. Only one family in five wth credit cards routinely carries an outstanding balance, according to Vlasenko.
“The recession has supposedly led to increases in family savings, major efforts by families to reduce debt, and other belt-tightening measures, so the figures...
Lincoln famously said it is better to remain silent and thought a fool than to speak up and remove all doubt. There are a bunch of liberals in the media and the blogosphere today who really ought to heed Lincoln before they presume to report or comment on yesterday's tragic events at the Holocaust Museum.
The conventional wisdom among these folks is that because Holocaust Museum murderer James W. Von Brunn hates Jews, he must therefore be a "right-wing hater" clearly have not read Von Brunn's stuff, or they read only the parts that serve their ideological agendas.
Erick Erickson of Red State points to these facts that are clear from Von Brunn's writings:
- Hated Christians.
- Despised Bush and McCain.
- Posted lengthy rants about “Neocons” involved in Jewish conspiracies to alter U.S. foreign policy in favor of Israel.
- He placed credence in 9/11 “truther” theories.
You should read the rest of Erick's post, too, because he provides multiple links from Daily Kos of statements by commenters that are virtually inter-changeable with Von Drunn's sick ranting. And while you are at it, check out this post by Ben Johnson at Front Page. Front Page is published by David Horowitz. Nobody else alive today in America knows the modern Left like Horowitz.
As for anti-semitism, people who constantly associate that sickness...
Readers of anAP story written by Seth Borenstein this morning may be forgiven if something seems not quite right with the study being reported as showing that global warming is causing less wind in the American midwest and east.
Here's how Borenstein reports the study:
"The idea that winds may be slowing is still a speculative one, and scientists disagree whether that is happening. But a first-of-its-kind study suggests that average and peak wind speeds have been noticeably slowing since 1973, especially in the Midwest and the East.
"'It's a very large effect,' said study co-author Eugene Takle, a professor of atmospheric science at Iowa State University. In some places in the Midwest, the trend shows a 10 percent drop or more over a decade. That adds up when the average wind speed in the region is about 10 to 12 miles per hour.
"There's been a jump in the number of low or no wind days in the Midwest, said the study's lead author, Sara Pryor, an atmospheric scientist at Indiana University.
"Wind measurements plotted out on U.S. maps by Pryor show wind speeds falling mostly along and east of the Mississippi River. Some areas that are banking on wind power, such as west Texas and parts of the Northern Plains, do not show winds slowing nearly as much. Yet, states such as Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Kansas, Virginia, Louisiana, Georgia,...
Here's a sobering thought inspired by the prospect of President Obama and Congress nationalizing the U.S. health care system: Breast cancer rates in Europe under nationalized health care systems are significantly higher than they are here, and women are much more likely to have breast cancer there than here.
Gateway Pundit's Jim Hoft looked at the data and the clips on this issue and found some extremely disturbing facts:
"Currently the United States leads the world in treating breast cancer. Women with breast cancer have a 14 percent higher survival rate in the United States than in Europe. Breast cancer mortality is 52 percent higher in Germany than in the United States, and 88 percent higher in the United Kingdom. Breast cancer mortality is also 9 percent higher in Canada than in the US. Less than 25 percent of U.S. women die from breast cancer. In Britain, it's 46 percent; France, 35 percent; Germany, 31 percent; Canada, 28 percent; Australia, 28 percent, and New Zealand, 46 percent.
"The European Network of Cancer Registries reported: "Breast cancer is also the most common cancer in females in Europe. It is estimated that in the year 2000 there were 350,000 new breast cancer cases in Europe, while the number of deaths from breast cancer was estimated at 130,000. Breast cancer is responsible for 26.5 percent of all new cancer cases among...
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-MD, has written President Obama a letter seeking to "delay final action on proposed closures pending further review of the decision to consolidate dealerships and the process by which Chrysler and GM selected the dealerships to close."
Hoyer's letter, which was also signed by Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-MD, and Rep. Daniel Maffei, D-NY, wonders if some of the closures are related to efforts to get out of contracts "which could require expensive buy-outs under normal conditions," and "allegations that dealers that have previously stood up for their rights against the manufacturers are being targeted by these closures."
The three congressmen add two graphs that effectively undercut th rationale for any government-mandated dealer closings:
"Closing these dealerships will put over 100,000 jobs at risk at a time when our country is shedding jobs at an alarming rate. We also question the criteria being used to determine which dealerships should be closed and the fundamental fairness involved in this effort. It is our view that the market rather than leaving it up to the manufacturers whose poor leadership contributed to their demise. Furthermore, we believe car dealers will be key players in any effort to revive the American auto industry.
"We believe the dealerships are one of the auto industry’s...
John R. Lott, the professor best known for his books, "More guns, less crime: The bias against gun rights" and "Freedomnomics," called earlier this week to talk about the possibility of partisan political considerations in the Obama administration's closing of nearly 800 Chrysler dealerships.
"I just don't see the evidence for partisanship," said Lott, who is a senior research scientist at the University of Maryland. He's prevously held professorships at the Wharton School, University of Chicago and Yale. When this guy has an opinion about an issue that is subject to data-driven analysis, I listen.
Turns out Lott's oldest son, Maxim, is a chip off the old block. Maxim Lott analyzed a data sample and found the more likely explanation for the closing of any particular dealership is how many of Chrysler's four distinct brand channels it sells. Those dealerships selling two fewer lines are more likely to get the axe.
Here's Maxim's summary:
Methodology
50 dealerships were picked at random from the list of 789 closing dealerships, and another 50 from the list of 2392 dealerships that are to remain open. I used a random number generator to determine which dealerships were selected.
The two groups of dealerships happen to be spread through the country similarly. In our sample of 50 closing dealerships, 60% came from states that Obama won....
Fox News' Glenn Beck had a little encounter with Whoopi Goldberg and Barbara Walters of "The View" and it became an explosive encounter indeed. Scott Baker of Briebart TV breaks it down and concludes that "a rising conservative voice" was portrayed as "lying sackful of dog mess."
In other words, Beck got the shaft from two of the celeb world's most famous media/movie figures. Call it an ambush. Baker does a superb job of bringing real sunlight to the darkness that is The View....
Those devilish research elves behind The Morning Bell at The Heritage Foundation have come up with a list of President Obama's Top 10 Apologies. Can you imagine Harry Truman or Ronald Reagan on World Apology Tours?
Anyway, here's what the elves came up with. I am sure this will be a dynamic list - i.e. changing with regularity in coming days as Obama finds more sins for which he must apologize on our behalf:
10. Apology for Guantanamo in Washington: “There is also no question that Guantanamo set back the moral authority that is America’s strongest currency in the world. … Rather than keeping us safer, the prison at Guantanamo has weakened American national security. It is a rallying cry for our enemies.”
9. Apology for the Mistakes of the CIA: “So don’t be discouraged by what’s happened in the last few weeks. Don’t be discouraged that we have to acknowledge potentially we’ve made some mistakes.”
8. Apology for U.S. Policy toward the Americas: “Too often, the United States has not pursued and sustained engagement with our neighbors. We have been too easily distracted by other priorities, and have failed to see that our own progress is tied directly to progress throughout the Americas.”
7. Apology before the Turkish Parliament: “The United States is still working through some of our own...
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi deserves praise for directing Dan Beard, the chief administrative officer of the House of Representatives, to begin posting online on a quarterly basis expense reports for each House member's office account, as well as those of House committees and House leaders.
This is a significant move forward in the effort to bring greater transparency and thus accountability to Congress. You can read Pelosi's letter to Beard here.I've not had much by way of praise to offer for the Speaker, but she deserves high praise for this decision. Of course, it would be better to have those accounts posted in real-time, as if they are checking accounts, but at least getting them online is a major step forward.
As things currently stand, the only way to get those reports is either to navigate to the one obscure office in the Capitol where they are kept as hard copies, or to buy them. To then get them online is a tremendously cumbersome and expensive proposition. Pelosi's decision shortens this process and makes the reports available on a vastly wider basis.
The Examiner has frequently called on congressional leaders to put all of their records online and make them accessible to anybody with Internet access. We're not there yet, but progress is being made.
Of course, the fact that the British Parliament is currently embroiled in a nasty scandal as a result of...
Noemie Emery's fine cover story on "Reagan in Opposition" in the June 1 edition of The Weekly Standard is must-reading for everybody and anybody on the Right who hopes to see a victory for limited government in the 2010 and 2012 elections.
Emery, a Weekly Standard contributing editor who also writes a sterling column of political analysis for this newspaper in its Wednesday print and online editions, describes how Reagan recovered from his loss of the 1976 GOP presidential nomination contest to Gerald Ford by following a strategy that redefined the party from its green-eyeshade roots to an expansive, optimistic, populist vehicle for achieving fundamental conservative reforms and winning the Cold War against the Soviets.
It was a combination that both won the White House against incumbent disaster Jimmy Carter in 1980 and led to the GOP retaking a majority in the Senate for the first time since 1954, then anchored the epic "Morning in America" re-election victory of 1984 over Fritz Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro.
Without giving away the whole story, see especially the passage in which Emery points to four elements of the Reagan character during the years between 1977 and 1980 that stood out. First, "he was focused on large, central themes" like defense, foreign policy and economy growth. Second, his tone "was unfailingly gracious and...
Federal investigators are probing the relationship between three prominent Members of Congress and their relationship to a now-defunct lobbying firm that appears to have been the fulcrum of a massive "pay-to-play" scheme in which the representatives offered earmarks in return for campaign contributions.
The three congressmen are Representatives John Murtha of Pennsylvania, Jim Moran of Virginia and Pete Visclosky of Indiana, all Democrats. The defunct lobbying group was known as the PMA Group. It was started by a former Murtha aide.
Last week, the FBI issued subpoenas to Visclosky employees and his congressional and campaign offices, seeking documents in connection with the probe. Visclosky has been in a position to obtain and to shepherd millions of dollars worth of earmarks in his position as chairman of the House Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee. Murtha and Moran similarly are in powerful committee positions that allow them to determine who is on the receiving end of millions of dollars in funding via earmarks.
Today, the Sunlight Foundation's Bill Allison, who has done yeoman's labor in tracking the money and political links in the PMA Group scandal, posted a graphic that, well, graphically, demonstrates the flow of money and influence centered in Visclosky. If this graphic doesn't persuade critics that earmarks are the key to the culture of...
What do John Brown, Scott Roeder and an anonymous poster at Talking Points Memo have in common? All three believe killing those who disagree with them politically is justified.
Brown lived more than a century before and helped incite the American Civil War, but Roeder and the TPM poster are walking among us today. And there is one key point on which Roeder differs from Brown and the TPM poster.
Roeder shot and killed Kansas' infamous abortion doctor George Tlller this past Sunday as the latter ushered in his local church. Roeder has a long history of anti-abortion fanaticism. His terrible deed was immediately and completely denounced as evil and unjustified by every pro-life leader in the country as soon as it was known.
Brown is known today mainly for leading his sons on a murderous and doomed raid on Harper's Ferry, WVA in 1859. He hoped the raid would incite a slave rebellion that would sweep the antebellum South, leaving thousands of slaveholders dead and the hated institution a smoldering corpse.
Let it be noted here that reading the constitution Brown and his cohorts - funded, incidentally, by multiple prominent New England businessmen, authors and public intellectuals - adopted in a convention in Chatham, Canada, before the raid makes it clear that Brown also saw himself emerging from the violence as the military dictator over a prostrate Dixie. But that's a...
Remember the names David Rufful and Josh Riddle. Both are Dartmouth students and both are "Young Cons," or young conservatives. They do rap. They do politics. Boy, do they. Their YouTube video "The Young Con Anthem" has been up a few days and has already garnered more than 120,000 views and multiple praise.
Rufful and Riddle have done something rather remarkable in many ways. For one thing, they've shown the continued relevance of a fusionist conservatism that unites otherwise disparate communities of admirers of individual freedom, republican liberty and American pride. When was the last time you saw college kids rapping in admiration of Jesus, Ronald Reagan and Atlas Shrugged.
And for another , theyve shown in a dramatic and appealing manner not seen since the Sharon Statement that freedom is not merely a universal yearning among men and women of all nations, but also of all ages. If there is another age group other than young people that ought to have more of a passion for individual liberty, I don't know who it would be.
We will be hearing more from these two remarkable young men....
Some folks in Washington think it's downright unfair to quote politicians' own words against them, but it seems to me that's the heart of accountability. In any case, Barack Obama is not the first politician to have his feet firmly planted on both sides of an issue, nor will he be the last.
So, here's what he said Saturday regarding a potential Senate Republican filibuster against his Supreme Court nomine, Judge Sonia Sotomayor:
“But what I hope is that we can avoid the political posturing and ideological brinksmanship that has bogged down this process, and Congress, in the past.”
And here is what he said in 2006 on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" regarding Senate Democrats who were then considering filibustering President George W. Bush's Supreme Court nominee, Judge Samuel Alito:
“Well, I will be supporting the filibuster because I think Judge Alito, in fact, is somebody who is contrary to core American values, not just liberal values, you know.”
That was then, this is now, right, Mr. President?...
Now this is the way these kinds of issues should be addressed. Zero Hedge, a blog run by some guys who know the difference between a slide rule and a dipstick, ran a quantitative analysis of the data concerning whether a Chrysler dealer is being closed or not and the political contributions of its majority owner.
They found a "highly positive correlation between dealer survival and Clinton donors." Not exactly what some might have expected, but there it is. One caution, which I stress in my Database 101 Computer-Assisted Research and Reporting (CARR) course, correlation is NOT causation. The rooster crows and the sun comes up, but the one doesn't cause the other. There may be additional factors besides political donations that partially explain which dealers are being closed.
Go here and read the full explanation by Zero Hedge. Another caution: These guys use language that isn't safe for work. You should also check out this post by Doug Ross.
By the way, when I speak of trans-partisanship, this sort of process is what I have in mind. This particular issue of whether partisan political considerations entered into which Chrysler dealerships got the axe was uniquely subject to a data-driven analysis. There may yet be analyses that need to be done, but for now there should be no doubt that strong evidence exists for the presence of partisan considerations in the...
A new White House policy on permissible lobbying on economic recovery and stimulus projects has taken a decidedly anti-First Amendment turn. It's a classic illustration of Big Government trying to control every aspect of a particular activity and in the process running up against civil liberty.
Check out this passage from a post on the White House blog by Norm Eisen, Special Counsel to the President on Ethics and Government Reform (emphasis added):
"First, we will expand the restriction on oral communications to cover all persons, not just federally registered lobbyists. For the first time, we will reach contacts not only by registered lobbyists but also by unregistered ones, as well as anyone else exerting influence on the process. We concluded this was necessary under the unique circumstances of the stimulus program.
"Second, we will focus the restriction on oral communications to target the scenario where concerns about merit-based decision-making are greatest –after competitive grant applications are submitted and before awards are made. Once such applications are on file, the competition should be strictly on the merits. To that end, comments (unless initiated by an agency official) must be in writing and will be posted on the Internet for every American to see.
"Third, we will continue to require immediate internet disclosure of all other...
You gotta watch this!...
Speaking at a $30,000-per-table fund raiser for an exclusive group of Los Angeles corporate executives Wednesday night, President Obama gave them a grand review of the accomplishments of his first four months in office, boldly claiming his record compares favorably with any chief executive since FDR.
Then, to a thunderous round of cheers from the assembly, Obama declared: "Los Angeles, you ain't seen nuthin' yet!"
It has indeed been an eventful four months. Here are some of the highlights, as compiled by the mischevious research elves at The Heritage Foundation and published today in the must-reading Morning Bell circular:
- Continued to fast-track government control of health care with a $33 billion expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) which isn’t even limited to children andonly worsened our nation’s health spending problem.
- Pushed through a $787 billion stimulus bill that essentially federalized the construction and renovation of public schools, began subsidizing health insurance for unemployed Americans regardless of income, created more than 30 new federal programs, effectively abolished the hugely successful 1996 welfare reform; and created a trillions dollars of new debt, to be dumped into the laps of our children and grandchildren.
- Passed an Omnibus spending bill that raised...
Evidence appears to be mounting that the Obama administration has systematically targeted for closing Chrysler dealers who contributed to Repubicans. What started earlier this week as mainly a rumbling on the Right side of the Blogosphere has gathered some steam today with revelations that among the dealers being shut down are a GOP congressman and closing of competitors to a dealership chain partly owned by former Clinton White House chief of staff Mack McLarty.
The basic issue raised here is this: How do we account for the fact millions of dollars were contributed to GOP candidates by Chrysler who are being closed by the government, but only one has been found so far that is being closed that contributed to the Obama campaign in 2008?
Florida Rep. Vern Buchanan learned from a House colleague that his Venice, Florida, dealership is on the hit list. Buchanan also has a Nissan franchise paired with the Chrysler facility in Venice.
"It's an outrage. It's not about me. I'm going to be fine," said Buchanan, the dealership's majority owner. "You're talking over 100,000 jobs. We're supposed to be in the business of creating jobs, not killing jobs," Buchanan told News 10, a local Florida television station.
Buchanan, who succeeded former Rep. Katharine Harris in 2006, reportedly learned of his dealership's termination from Rep.Candace Miller, R-MI....
An internecine war is heating up between the professional political consultants who run the Washington GOP establishment and insurgent conservatives beyond the Washington Beltway, who are fed up with seeing their money go to anti-life, big-spending, tax-hiking people like Arlen Specter and Lincoln Chaffee.
Spotlighting this conflict are the attempts in recent weeks by the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) to recruit a liberal GOPer to oppose former congressman Pat Toomey - a solid and articulate conservative with support from such party moderates as former Lt. Gov Bill Scranton - in the race to succeed Specter. Specter switched to the Democrats last month when it became clear Toomey would clean his clock in the upcoming Pennsylvania GOP senatorial primary.
Former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge was the NRSC favorite to replace Specter in the Stop-Toomey effort, but he declined, apparently after seeing the same numbers that persuaded Specter the days of Republicans-In-Name-Only (RINO) being nominated by the Pennsylvania party are coming to an end, for better or worse.
Things really came to a a head when the NRSC's chairman, Sen. John Cornyn, R-TX, endorsed Florida Gov. Charlie Crist to succeed the retiring Sen. Mel Martinez. Crist actively supported President Barack Obama's economic stimulus package, and has signed multiple tax hikes. Cornyn's endorsement came...
One of the unsung heroes in the nation's capital is Bill Allison of the Sunlight Foundation. Bill is a former investigative reporter and has for the past three years at Sunlight been a leader in the trans-partisan movement for greater transparency and accountability in government.
He didn't get much sleep Tuesday night because he spent most of it tracking down what every current member of the U.S. Senate did to satisfy a requirement that they post their earmark rquests on their official web sites. The rules don't say how those requests are to be formatted, so, as Allison found in doing the same exercise with House members, there are almost as many ways to post senators' earmarks as there are senators.
But Bill persevered and the results are here for everybody to share. He has also helpfully loaded the results in a Google Documents spreadsheeet.
As he notes: "They labeled them as funding priorities, programs and project requests, investments in their states and, in just one case, earmarks. They posted image files that can’t be cut and pasted, tables, single files with every item or dozens of files for each individual item."
It will be more difficult to do than it should be, thanks to the senators lack of uniform posting formats, but just having the information in some accessible format assures that these earmarks will get far more examination and analysis...
Leviathan's California minions are likely to get a devastating punch to the gut in today's voting on a controversial slate of six initiative proposals, including Prop 1A that implements the tax hike package Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders from both parties adopted in April partially to close the state's $44 billion deficit.
Going into today's voting, polls indicate defeat is likely for all six initiatives. Ballotpedia.org has the running summary of the relevant surveys here. The most recent survey of SurveyUSA, for example, found 38 percent of respondents support Prop 1A, while 51 percent oppose it, with 11 percent undecided.
Thus, even if the undecideds break overwhelmingly for Prop 1A, it is hard to see how Schwarzenegger and the rest of the California political establishment will be able to avoid an extremely painful political showdown in occasioned by the defeat.
Here's how Ballotpedia.org describes the initiatives:
"If Proposition 1A is passed, $10 billion in "temporary" sales, use, income and vehicle taxes imposed as part of the 2009-2010 budget agreement would each be extended for one or two years, resulting in a further tax increase of some $16 billion. [2],[3]
"Although the measure is often characterized as a limitation on state spending, it does not cap the amount of revenues that could be collected by the state or the...
A genuine political crisis appears to be brewing in California. The state is already in flames as the latest wildfire continues to scorch everything in its path around Santa Barbara. But there is smoke to indicate the approach of a political crisis that could arrive May 19 when California voters cast ballots on six proposals submitted by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the California Assembly to deal with the state's yawning budget deficit.
Blogger W. C. Varones points to the latest survey by the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) of 1,080 likely voters and finds opposition to the six ballot proposals officials say must be approved if the state is to avoid dramatic cuts in essential services. Proposition 1A is the most controversial of the ballot measures because it confirms a $16 billion, four-year tax hike approved earlier this year by Schwarzenegger and the Assembly in their effort to close state government's $42 billion budget deficit.
Go here to Ballotpedia for a detailed description of the California ballot measures, and other information, including cumulative survey results for each of the six proposals.
The latest PPIC survey finds 52 percent of those surveyed saying they oppose the proposals, compared to 35 percent who approve of them. The numbers a week ago were closer, with 49 percent opposed and 40 percent supporting. But the significance is less in...
The following statement was issued this afternoon by Jenny Beth Martin and theTea Party Patriots, a national organizing effort created following the April 15 Tea Party protests:
Among the political class it has apparently become acceptable, and even fashionable, for American politicians from the President on down to mock the citizens they represent.
In a development that can only further denigrate the discourse necessary to any effective democracy, politicians and the "serious" news media are now mocking citizens regularly and with impunity.
Supported by mainstream journalists on MSNBC and CNN who themselves use sexual slurs on national television to mock and attack the same citizens, the politicians openly demonstrate their feelings of superiority in regard to those they were elected to represent. They now candidly express their disdain for a significant portion of the American population without threat of reprisal by the mainstream media.
On the morning of the April 15th Tea Parties, the American public was informed on national news by one of the President's economic advisers, Jared Bernstein, that the President was "unaware" of the tea parties taking place in over 850 cities across the nation.
On April 29th, the President informed a town hall meeting in St. Louis that he has now become aware of the tea parties, but only from "certain news...
Half a dozen of President Obama's most controversial nominees have been caught with unpaid taxes and related problems, but he is making hundreds of other appointments to key positions in the White House and elsewhere in the executive branch that ought to be sparking widespread protests.
Like Obama's choice to be the next Director of the Office of National Drug Policy, Seattle police chief Gil Kerlikowske. Name doesn't ring a bell? Well, think back to the Mardi Gras street riots that broke out in Seattle in 2001. Kerlikowske was chief then and ordered his police force to stand back and let the riot happen.
At least 72 injuries resulted and one person was killed in the melee. Here are some more disturbing facts about this Obama nominee that just might make you wonder why the president would even think of nominating this guy for such a job:
* The year that Kerlikowske took over as police chief, there were 332 arrests for misdemeanor marijuana possession. After six years of his “leadership,” arrests fell to 148.
* In 2003, there was a vote on Initiative 75 to make marijuana possession the lowest law enforcement priority. Gil Kerlikowske opposed the initiative but did little to defeat it. He said that arresting people for possessing marijuana for personal use was not a priority. In this and other drug debates, Kerlikowske has had little to say.
* Every year...
Did you know the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1926 that laws that aren't clearly and easily understood by a reasonable person may infringe on your civil liberties and right to due process?
Did you also know that If you trade a haircut for investment advice from a broker that you have to report the transaction even though it involved no cash?
And did you know 26 nations, including 20 in the former Soviet empire, now have flat tax systems?
Is there a message here about the evil of complicated laws and the damage they do to individual liberty? I think so and the Cato Institute has produced a superb YouTube video that lays it all out, with interviews with Chris Edwards, Jim Harper and Daniel Mitchell, three of the smartest tax guys in D.C. Strongly recommended by Tapscott's Copy Desk....
King Obama the First has issued a law enforcement warning decree providing loyal citizens with important information about new internal terrorist threats to the peace and contentment of his kingdom. The decree is being circulated now to the authorities by First Minister of Security Janet Napolitano, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Approved media references should note the title of the decree as “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate is Fueling Resurgence of Radicalization and Recruitment.” For neighborhood and community watches, the key section of the King’s decree is one that describes the essential identifying characteristics of these extremely dangerous new terrorists as “those that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely. It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.”
All loyal citizens are encouraged to be on the lookout for all persons or groups fitting the above description. Do not try to apprehend such persons by yourself, as these terrorists are often armed and extremely dangerous. They often attempt to conceal their true identities and purposes with frequent reference to documents such as the Declaration of Independence...
Excellent analysis by the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Jennifer Granick of the proposed Cybersecurity Act of 2009 that gives President Barack Obama and the Secretary of Commerce unprecedented new powers to regulate the Internet and ignore privacy laws while doing it.
Notes Granick:
"Essentially, the Act would federalize critical infrastructure security. Since many of our critical infrastructure systems (banks, telecommunications, energy) are in the hands of the private sector, the bill would create a major shift of power away from users and companies to the federal government. This is a potentially dangerous approach that favors the dramatic over the sober response.
"One proposed provision gives the President unfettered authority to shut down Internet traffic in an emergency and disconnect critical infrastructure systems on national security grounds goes too far. Certainly there are times when a network owner must block harmful traffic, but the bill gives no guidance on when or how the President could responsibly pull the kill switch on privately-owned and operated networks.
"Furthermore, the bill contains a particularly dangerous provision that could cripple privacy and security in one fell swoop: 'The Secretary of Commerce— shall have access to all relevant data concerning (critical infrastructure) networks without regard to any provision of...
Billions of Christians this morning around the Earth celebrate what they believe to be the central fact of all human history: More than 2,000 years ago, Jesus Christ, an intinerant preacher/prophet in a backwater province of the Roman Empire, was resurrected three days after dying the most horrible of deaths by crucifixion.
Easter is celebrated because, without the Resurrection, there is no Christianity. Resurrection was Christ's method of proving that He was exactly who He claimed to be - the incarnate Son of God, the creator of the universe, and the sole source of salvation for those who accept Him as their personal savior. None of those claims can be true if the Resurrection did not actually happen.
That is the crux of the entire debate about Jesus - Either He was what He claimed to be, or the man was a lunatic or a liar. For me, I have no doubt that He was resurrected from the dead. He said He would be beforehand and there is nothing during his prior life to suggest even the remotest doubt His veracity. Jesus was, after all, the most un-selfish human being who ever lived.
I also believe because of what He did for me on the morning of March 1, 1991, when He rescued me from the hell of alcoholism, and because of how He has changed my heart and mind in the years since. As the most wonderful hymn ever written puts it, before I was blind, but now I can see. And I am merely...
Chris Stirewalt, the Examiner's top-notch politics editor, worries that the sun may be setting on American-style conservatism and that the only recourse in the Obama era will be to concede the inevitable socialization of the economy, the permanence of the welfare state and the inevitability of a GOP gone all wet.
Such fatalism is a continual temptation for conservatives because we recognize the dark side of human nature is always there. But to determine if his fears are well-grounded, let's take a short American political history tour, starting with FDR and the New Deal.
After that man won the White House twice and gained passage of most of his New Deal, lots of Republicans despaired of ever winning again. So in 1940 they went with a former Democrat, Wendell Wilkie, a Modern Republican who promised that he wouldn't repeal the New Deal. He got whupped.
In 1944, they put another Modern Republican up against FDR, New York Gov. Thomas E. Dewey, but it was at the height of WWII, Roosevelt had achieved Sainthood and Dewey got whupped. Four years later, people were sure Dewey would win it all. But Truman gave'em hell and Dewey got whupped again. He spent the rest of his life as a model for wedding cakes.
Finally, in 1952, a Modern Republican won. Ike was a non-political war hero who was courted by both parties. Once elected, he left the Democrats in Congress to run the...
Capitol Hill is aswarm with lobbyists representing big corporations, labor unions, foreign governments and ideological activists groups, all trying to persuade Membes of Congress to vote this way or that on thousands of legislative proposals every day, right? So many that it's impossible to keep track of them, right?
Wrong!
The Center for Responsive Politics (CRP) has a new online tool that tracks the number of lobbyists reporting work on particular bills for each year going back to 2005. Here's how Capital Eye, CRP's fine blog, describes what the tool has turned up thus far:
Of the 10 most lobbied-on bills in the 110th Congress (2007-2008), seven were appropriations bills. These bills saw a lot of action:
- More than 1,200 clients reported paying lobbyists to try to sway Congress on how to appropriate Department of Homeland Security funds.
- 978 clients paid lobbyists to work on appropriations for the departments of Labor, Health and Human Services and Education.
- More than 800 clients hired lobbyists to represent their interests related to the farm bill in 2007-2008. Agricultural company Monsanto filed 34 reports that mentioned the bill during that time, while Verizon Communications filed 23 and Kraft Foods filed 16.
- Nearly 750 clients hired lobbyists to represent their interests related to the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act...
No? Well, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has a new exercise video out by that title that is guaranteed to either take off those unsightly pounds you've been trying for years to lose, or so terrify you about what she and the rest of the Washington liberal crowd will do with your money that you will .... well, let's just say you will definitely need a change of clothes.
Go here for your copy of "Sweatin' With The Socialists." Hurry! Act now before Nancy doubles your...
You know something amazing is happening in grassroots America when thousands of people are willing to stand in ilne in the rain for hours to join a signing party at Barnes & Noble with Mark Levin for his superb new book, "Liberty and Tyranny," in Tysons Corner, which is in Fairfax County, VA.
Understand that Fairfax is the heart of Northern Virginia, which has been trending heavily Democratic in recent years and which led Barack Obama's winning the state in the 2008 presidential election. Go here to Red Sounding for a video of the crowd and more details.
And you know something is up when thousands of people in cities across the country are turning out for Tea Party protests that are becoming so frequent and well-attended that it is no longer possible to dismiss them as a merely passing phenomena. Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit has been doing a superb job of documenting the protests. Check out his latest update with a link to a Hartford Courant story. Glenn gets a Hat Tip for linking to Red Sounding on the Levin signing video, too.
So what is happenin' here? Could it be that President Barack Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have so over-reached that they have scared the daylights out of millions of moderately conservative, middle-of-the-road Americans who previously were only vaguely aware of politics?
Put another way, I...
He supported Barack Obama against John McCain, yet a YouTube video of his recent dressing-down of Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Great Britain has drawn more than 1.2 million views and propelled him to near-instant star status among conservatives here in the states and across the pond in his home country.
He, of course, is Daniel Hannan and he has the gift of speaking great truths as common sense in discussing the great issues of our time. If you have not watched Hannan confronting Brown, go here right now and give it your undivided attention. You will quite likely find yourself dazzled. I know I was.
Hannan's sudden ascent coincides with the explosion of Tea Party Protests here in America. Coincidence? I don't think so. Earlier this week, Hannan appeared on Neil Cavuto's Fox News program and answered multiple questions about the current economic crisis, British and American politics, and the future of free markets.
After you watch Hannan, come back here and tell me and your fellow readers what you think of this...
Sen. Tom Coburn, the Oklahoma Republican who co-authored the landmark Federal Financial Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006, which required the federal government to establish a Google-like searchable Internet database of most federal spending. The site - USASpending.gov - went live in 2007 and has quickly become an essential resouce for those seeking to understand what the federal government is doing with its multiple trillions of tax dollars.
As one of the folks who for nearly a decade played a behind-the-scenes roll in making USASpending.gov a reality, I have wondered how long it would be before some politicians tried to play games with the database. Most recently, it came to light that some agencies - most notably including the Treasury Department of Tim Geithner - are not reporting their data to the web site as required by law.
As a result, Coburn is asking some important questions about how the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is managing USASpending.gov. The text of Coburn's letter follows:
Mr. Peter Orszag
Director
The Office of Management and Budget
725 17th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20503
Dear Mr. Orszag,
Signed into law on September 26, 2006, the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006 (Public Law 109-282) called for the creation of a searchable website allowing taxpayers across the country to track how their money is...
That $787 billion economic stimulus package from President Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress is chock full of spending surprises, many of which won't be known until the funding gets to the political operatives at the state and local levels where the pay-offs are made.
In Maryland, which is among the states receiving the biggest shares of stimulus funding, there is a conservative think tank that does a superb job of tracking such things, the Calvert Institute, overseen by George Liebmann. Calvert has just completed a comprehensve analysis of how the stimulus funding is affecting Maryland public policy.
As you might expect of one of the bluest of the Blue States - Gov. Martin O'Malley and the General Assemby are among the most consistently liberal in country - the news is not good. Liebmann summarizes Calvert's findings thusly:
"Nothing about the O’Malley administration’s approach to the stimulus package suggests that a responsible, future-oriented approach is being taken. Rather the administration has chosen to use the newly available funds to avoid taking necessary measures that would offend what it regards as its core constituencies: state employees, unionized teachers, construction unions, and the local governments of areas that reliably vote Democratic.
" There is similar reluctance to face up to the facts about the future funding...
Every morning, one of the first, essential reads for me is Erick Erickson's RedState.com Morning Briefing. Sometimes I think Erickson never sleeps, just reads every newspaper, news magazine, policy paper and left-win rant that's been published in the previous 12 hours.
Then he distills the most important trends, news and observations and puts them into the Morning Briefing. He lives and works in Georgia, I live in Maryland and work in downtown Washington, D.C. But I often have to read MB to make sure I know about critically important news here in the nation's capitol.
If this reads like an endorsement, it is. You ought to go here and sign up right now. And in case you wonder, no, I won't get paid a cent for writing this post. In fact, when Erick reads it the first time, it will be news to him. So for once I will be a little ahead of him on something here in D.C.!...
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is so worried about the future of one of her hometown newspapers, the financially ailing San Francisco Chronicle, that she has asked the Justice Department to consider giving one-time publishing giant Hearst, which owns the paper, permission to ignore anti-trust laws.
"We must ensure that our policies enable our news organizations to survive and to engage in the news gathering and analysis that the American people expect," Pelosi wrote to Attorney General Eric Holder, according to SFGate, the Chronicle's online news site.
SF Gate also reported that "the speaker said the issue of newspapers' survival and antitrust law will be the subject of a hearing soon before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts and Competition Policy, chaired by Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga."
Well, if Pelosi is so concerned about the ability of news organizations to get the news, I have an idea for her and this is the perfect week to suggest it, since it is Sunshine Week. That's the week that commemorates passage of the Freedom of Information
Act in 1966, and the birth of America's fourth president, James Madison, who wrote the First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of the press, among much else.
The FOIA has been among the most important tools used by journalists for decades to get important documents and report news critical to the public's right to...
Did you feel it? The political ground shifting beneath President Barack Obama since his speech last week to Congress? It's been downhill since and I'm not referring mainly to the Dow Jones record-setting dive. The pivot point of the shift was the speech, or rather what the speech did to the evolving public narrative of Obama.
Let's review:
* Since the first of the year, Rush Limbaugh's audience has exploded , according to Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post, even as his daily assaults on Obama have intensified. The conservative Talk Radio maestro has become quite possibly the most listened-to radio personality in America since before Paul Harvey (God rest his soul).
Demand for his air time hs suddenly become so intense, Limbaugh told The Examiner's Byron York earlier today, that his network sold 80 percent as much advertising in January 2009 as it did in all of 2008, and expects to sell-out the year by the end of March. That was before Obama and White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel launched an explicit counter-attack against Limbaugh that seems only to be making him bigger.
* Glenn Beck's eminently forgettable presence on CNN has been transformed, according to The Los Angeles Times, by his move to Fox News where his main theme has been variations on this question - Wake Up! Wake UP! What in Heaven's name does Barack Obama think he is doing to America? Beck has a...
Legendary radio broadcaster Paul Harvey - who invented conservative talk radio years before Rush Limbaugh became famous - passed away yesterday. Harvey was an American original whose character shone through whenever his wonderfully unique voice came across the airwaves to tell America the rest of the story.
Marc Wilson is a Lee Enterprises executive who before was a reporter for AP in Chicago. In the following remembrance, Wilson tells of his memorable encounter with Harvey on a cold, windy, snowy Chicago street and the events that led up to the unexpected meeting of one of Tulsa, Oklahoma's most famous sons and the former wire service journalist.
In the pre-dawn hours of a frigid, windy winter morning 30 years ago -- as I was hurrying from Chicago’s Union Station to North Michigan Avenue -- a black limousine pulled up next to me and stopped. The driver rolled down his tinted window and told me: “Get in.”
The passenger door opened, and one of the great voices in history boomed: “You look pretty cold, my friend. Let me give you a ride.”
I nervously peered inside the limo, and saw Paul Harvey, the legendary broadcaster. I hopped in the limo, shook Paul’s hand and rode with him about a mile through downtown Chicago.
We both were due at work at 6 a.m. – Paul at his ABC studio offices, and I at the Associated Press bureau in the...
Two extraordinarily important political developments took place this week right under the noses of the Obama-worshippers in the Mainstream Media and, as so often happens with the real news, most of them barely knew about it, if at all.
First, there was the record number of attendees - 8,500+ - at the Conservative Political Action Conference and the stem-winding, in-your-face, hour-and-20-minute speech by Rush Limbaugh that sent them back to their communities. Second, there were Tea Party Protests in cities big and small, coast-to-coast.
These two events are critically important because they tell us that Barack Obama's greatest advantage - the historic nature of his candidacy - is no longer the Star Trek Shield that protects him against all critical evaluation.
And, as examples of the flash crowd phenomena, the Tea Party Protests are graphic proof that the Right is beginning to get it concerning New Media and its capacity to focus political movements.
Reading the Limbaugh text is one thing (and I strongly encourage you to do so here), but you also need to watch the video of it here in order to appreciate fully what happened and why.
One Mainstream Media writer did appear to pick up on this point. David Mark of Politico quoted several passages from among Limbaugh's remarks on the issue of Obama's race:
"'It doesn't matter to me what his race is. He's liberal, and...
"Tea Party" protests have sprung up in multiple cities across the country since Congress passed and President Barack Obama signed the economic stimulus bill into law as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
As much as I rejoice in the sight of legions of fed-up Americans taking to the streets to protest the central government's colossal waste of the first fruits of their labors, it is important that people understand that the original Boston Tea Party was neither spontaneous nor a mere lark.
The Boston Tea Party was a planned act of insurrection and both the participants and cheering bystanders knew the consequences would be fateful. At The New Phampleteer, "Clarendon" goes into wonderfully interesting detail to explain the back story of the real tea party.
Did you know, for example, that the pre-arranged signal for the boarding of the three tea ships in Boston harbor was Samuel Adams announcing at a protest meeting in Fanueil Hall that "this meeting can do no more to save the country," and that planning for the event had been going on for weeks prior to that gathering?
And did you know that the price of tea would actually decrease under the parliamentary act that sparked the Boston Tea Party? Clarendon notes the significance of this key fact that is likely little known to American students today:
"At the same time,...
One reason congressional leaders are so intent on getting the economic stimulus bill passed as quickly as possible this week is that many of them are leaving town on junkets. You remember junkets, those tax-paid sight-seeing tours masquerading as trips for official business.
Al Kamen at The Washington Post, had an excellent piece yesterday on one of the more prominent trips about to be made, noting that:
"On Saturday, Rep. John Tanner (D-Tenn.), chairman of the House delegation to NATO's parliamentary assembly, and his wife will lead a delegation of 13 lawmakers -- plus 10 spouses -- on a fine nine-day jaunt starting at NATO's headquarters in Brussels.
"Before you start scoffing about how this hardly compares to Tanner's post-election delegation to Valencia and Rome in November, we would point out that the next stop is, yes, the City of Lights, Paris, where one could have a nice late Valentine's Day moment.
"From there, we move on to Vienna for a little Sacher torte and then to review NATO's strategy to defend the Bavarian Alps, stopping in the lovely ski center of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, with its breathtaking views.
"The huge number of members, spouses and staffers, plus military escorts, will require taking one of the bigger military jets, but we're told these trips are an important use of taxpayer money."
Of course the trip is for vitally...
Peter Wallison of the American Enterprise Institute has consistently been the most reliable and succinct of experts in explaining how the present economic crisis came about. His piece in the latest edition of The American Spectator lays it out in undeniable detail, including this passage dealing with the Community Reinvestment Act:
"As originally enacted in 1977, the CRA vaguely mandated regulators to consider whether an insured bank was serving the needs of the 'whole' community. For 16 years, the act was invoked rather infrequently, but 1993 marked a decisive turn in its enforcement. What changed? Substantial media and political attention was showered upon a 1992 Boston Federal Reserve Bank study of discrimination in home mortgage lending. This study concluded that, while there was no overt discrimination in banks’ allocation of mortgage funds, loan officers gave whites preferential treatment. The methodology of the study has since been questioned, but at the time it was highly influential with regulators and members of the incoming Clinton administration; in 1993, bank regulators initiated a major effort to reform the CRA regulations.
"In 1995, the regulators created new rules that sought to establish objective criteria for determining whether a bank was meeting CRA standards. Examiners no longer had the discretion they once had. For banks, simply...
More than 300 amendments have been offered so far on the Senate's $900 billion version of an economic stimulus bill, but only 20 have actually been debated and voted on, with 9 being approved. But Sen. Tom Coburn, R-OK, is today offering what what is likely the most interesting amendment presented on the bill.
Coburn's amendment would strike the largest single earmark ever - a $2 billion appropriation for the FutureGen Alliance Project of Illinois. Former Illinois Democrat Gov. Rod Blagojevich has been among the project's biggest supporters, even though the U.S. Department of Energy says it's a waste of resources.
Coburn's staff has compiled the following case against the FutureGen earmark:
- $2 Billion FutureGen Earmark Violates President Obama’s Demand for an "Earmark-Free” Stimulus Bill
- The $2 Billion Earmark for FutureGen Is the Most Expensive Congressional Pork Project in History
- Department of Energy Says “FutureGen a Waste of Tax Money”
- Independent Experts and Opinion Leaders Agree that FutureGen Is Not the Best Technology
- Funding for FutureGen in this bill is a Result of Successful Lobbying rather than Its Potential for Job Creation or Energy Production
- Energy Producers Who Are Enjoying Record Profits Do Not Need Government Subsidies, Especially at a Time When Other Struggling Industries Are...
03/02/09 1:24 PM
Two extraordinarily important political developments took place this week right under the noses of the Obama-worshippers in the Mainstream Media and, as so often happens with the real news, most of them barely knew about it, if at all.
First, there was the record number of attendees - 8,500+ - at the Conservative Political Action Conference and the stem-winding, in-your-face, hour-and-20-minute speech by Rush Limbaugh that sent them back to their communities. Second, there were Tea Party Protests in cities big and small, coast-to-coast.
These two events are critically important because they tell us that Barack Obama's greatest advantage - the historic nature of his candidacy - is no longer the Star Trek Shield that protects him against all critical evaluation.
And, as examples of the flash crowd phenomena, the Tea Party Protests are graphic proof that the Right is beginning to get it concerning New Media and its capacity to focus political movements.
Reading the Limbaugh text is one thing (and I strongly encourage you to do so here), but you also need to watch the video of it here in order to appreciate fully what happened and why.
One Mainstream Media writer did appear to pick up on this point. David Mark of Politico quoted several passages from among Limbaugh's remarks on the issue of Obama's race:
"'It doesn't matter to me what his race is. He's liberal, and...
Very interesting result on a survey conducted recently by the Opinion Research Corporation for the Center for Union Facts (CUF). Turns out 82 percent of non-union people responding in the survey say they don't want their jobs to become unionized.
Advocates of the horribly mis-named Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) or Card Check proposal in Congress will no doubt disavow the survey, but opponents of EFCA should insist on its legitimacy and even challenge opponents to explain why the publicly available methodology is flawed. I doubt there will be many takers on that score.
Here's how CUF describes the poll and its results:
"Today, the Center for Union Facts (CUF) released a unique new poll which found that 82% of non-unionized American workers would not like their jobs to be unionized. The poll, which was conducted by the Opinion Research Corporation of Princeton, New Jersey, clearly demonstrates that an overwhelming number of Americans have no interest in joining a union.
"Despite this, Democratic leadership in Congress continues to push the deceptively-named Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which would effectively force millions of Americans into unions against their will by eliminating their right to a secret ballot vote. This poll indicates that there is no national mandate for a dramatic change in the law to make it easier to unionize. It further exposes the...
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel, D-NY, told a C-SPAN audience Sunday that he expects to be cleared of all charges by the House Ethics Committee this week.
Sounds like a little favoritism being shown one of the most powerful members of the House, since Ethics Committee rules require no advance notice of rulings.
If Rangel is proven correct - and nothing would surprise me from that joke of an ethics panel - it will do great damage to the already shredded credibility of Congress, which ranks down there below used car salesmen in public approval ratings. It will also fuel more attention in the Mainstream Media and the Blogosphere to Rangel because of the obvious issues.
Bill Allison at the Sunlight Foundation's Real-Time Investigations describes a few of the issues:
"If so, it’s hard to imagine that the Select Committee on Ethics will have devoted anything more than a cursory glance at the various issues raised. Consider just one aspect, for which documents are in the public record: Rangel’s financial disclosure forms. We took a look at his filings going all the way back to 1978, the first year members were required to disclose information on their personal finances, and found 28 instances in which he failed to report acquiring, owning or disposing of assets. Assets worth between $239,026 and $831,000 appear or disappear with no...
Welcome to the major leagues, Mr. President
There are multiple lessons to be gleaned by President Barack Obama from the withdrawal yesterday of former Sen. Tom Daschle as the White House nominee for Secretary of the Health and Human Services Department. Here are four: Read the full story.
Emery: Iraq's road to democracy
Like the man who conceived it, George W. Bush's democracy project has been through hard times. It has been called arrogant, foolhardy, naïve, and the last word in hubris, the sort of over-reaching ambition that gives gall a bad name.Read the full story.
Ambrose: Democrats adopt the John Thain model for economic action
Facts rise to embarrassing visibility, careful analysts of varied ideological persuasions speak out, and the truth gradually becomes known – the Democratic stimulus package could well be an extravagance helping the economy about as much as John Thain's office renovation helped Merrill Lynch recover stability.Read the full story.
Tapscott: Dodd gives journos the idiot's treatment on mortgage documents
There are two kinds of journalists in the world - those who have been been given the idiot's treatment by public officials on a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for public documents, and those who will be.Read the full story.
Jacobson: About today's million-member union march
You can...
Examiner Editorial:
Here are five of the worst in Congress, who deserve the first places on the Wall of Shame.
Quin Hillyer:
Washington is giving a costly new meaning to the command to "get the lead out" and the class-action trial lawyers are licking their chops again.
Tapscott's Copy Desk:
Surprise, surprise! Senate Banking Committee Chairman Thomas Dodd, D-CN, gives journalists the idiot's treatment on his promise to disclose documents concerning his "Friends of Angelo"...
There are two kinds of journalists in the world - those who have been been given the idiot's treatment by public officials on a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for public documents, and those who will be.
Believe me, I know because I didn't get inducted into the Freedom of Information Act Hall of Fame for nothing (no, really, I am not making that up. Go here if you think only liberals get such honors.).
Now Senate Banking Committee Chairman Sen, Chris Dodd, D-CN, has pulled what has to be an all-time classic evasion stunt against journalists covering Congress and the economic crisis concerning his promise six months ago to make public all of the documents about his sweetheart loan deal with Countrywide Mortgage.
Dodd invited a select few Connecticut reporters to his office in Hartford Monday and gave them a few minutes to view - but not copy - a small selection of documents that he claims proves he did nothing wrong in accepting special treatment from Countrywide that saved him a reported $75,000 in refinancing a couple of loans worth a total of $800,000. The Wall Street Journal called it Dodd's "Peek-A-Boo Disclosure."
He got the favorable treatment from Countrywide under the lender's "Friends of Angelo" program, which Portfolio.com exposed last year as the influence-peddling tool of Angelo Moziolo, Countrywide's founder. Lots of...
Club for Growth officials have in recent months been contacting every member of the Senate and House asking them to pledge to sponsor no earmarks. So far, the vast majority of the Members of Congress have refused to take the pledge. Here are the Members who have said yes, according to Club for Growth's latest tabuliation:
HOUSE
John Boehner(R-OH-08)
Eric Cantor (R-VA-07)
John Campbell (R-CA-48)
Devin Nunes (R-CA-21)
Jeff Flake (R-AZ-06)
Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA-03)
John Kline (R-MN-02)
Mike McCaul (R-TX-10)
Walter Jones (R-NC-03)
Jeb Hensarling (R-TX-05)
Patrick McHenry (R-NC-10)
Virginia Foxx (R-NC-05)
Dan Burton (R-IN-05)
Tom Price (R-GA-06)
John Shadegg (R-AZ-03)
Paul Ryan (R-WI-01)
Joe Pitts (R-PA-16)
SENATE
Jim DeMint (R-SC)
Tom Coburn (R-OK)
Russ Feingold (D-WI)
Claire McCaskill (D-MO)
Richard Burr (R-NC)
John McCain (R-AZ)
Note there are 17 House members, all Republicans, and only six senators, including two Democrats. These 23 solons might well be considered the ethical heart and soul of the current Congress. Note that among the missing are 2008 GOP presidential nominee John McCain of AZ and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of KY.
UPDATE: Now McCain is on the list, too
Club for Growth's Andy Roth says McCain has been added to the list and that it was an unintentional oversight to not include him on the original posting....
Legislative records for January 2009 show not a single bill or amendment to a bill introduced in the Senate by these senators:
* Mark Begich, D-AK
* Michael Bennett, D-CO
* Robert Bennett, R-UT
* Joseph Biden, D-DE
* Richard Burr, R-NC
* Roland Burris, D-IL
* Robert Byrd, D-WVA
* Tom Carper, D-DE
* Susan Collins, R-ME
* Bob Corker, R-TN
* Mike Crapo, R-ID
* Kay Hagan, D-NC
* Mike Johanns, R-NE
* Ed Caufman, D-DE
* Mary Landrieu,D-LA
* Jeff Merkley, D-OR
* Mark Pryor, D-AR
* Jack Reed, D-RI
* James Risch, R-RI
* Jeff Sessions, R-AL
* Richard Shelby, R-AL
* Tom Udall, D-NM
* Mark Warner, D-VA
Some, like Colorado's Michael Bennet, were only recently appointed and had no prior legislative experience. Others, like Nebraska's Mike Johanns, was just elected in November. And still others, like Mark Warner of Virginia and Tom Udall of New Mexico, have extensive experience in government. Warner was governor of Virginia and Udall was a congressman. Is it taking them that long to find the key to the Senate men's room?
Then there a bunch of these folks who are Senate veterans, like Jeff Sessions and Richard Shelby of Alabama, Mark Pryor of Arkansas, and Susan Collins of Maine. In their defense, Sessions and Shelby can certainly point to their very visible and active roles as public spokesmen for opposition to further TARP bailout funding and automakers bailout.
But it's hard not to...
Folks at the Heritage Foundation are working overtime reading the text of the economic stimulus package and digging out the hidden facts about this monstrosity. Here are some of the latest results from their efforts:
* The Senate spending bill of $900 Billion is equal in size to the entire economy of Australia. It is twice the size of oil-rich Saudi Arabia.
* It is enough money to provide every current high school Junior and Senior student a 4 year education at a private university, and still have $150 billion to spare.
* The House spending bill last week of $819 Billion is equivalent to borrowing $10,520 from every family in America. This borrowed money equals what the average family spends on food, clothing, and health care in an entire year.
* 2010 spending from this bill would more than double New Deal spending in 1936, in today’s dollars. Despite doubling federal spending, unemployment after the New Deal was enacted remained above 20 percent until World War II.
* More recently, Japan responded to a 1990 recession by passing 10 "stimulus" bills over 8 years (building the largest national debt in the industrialized world), and their economy remains stagnant.
* By inserting a Davis-Bacon labor-wage provision into the legislation, leadership has automatically tacked on an additional $17 Billion in spending to protect distorted, inflated and often...
Examiner Editorial:
There are scary similarities between what is happening these days in Congress and 1930.
Sunday Reflection:
Powerline's Paul Mirengoff explains why tax cuts are better for economic stimulus than increased federal spending.
Michael Reagan:
Economic "stimulus" is really about the liberal tax dollar pipeline.
Tapscott's Copy Desk:
If RINOs are so great, where are the DINOs?
Brightest Ideas of the Week
10 of the best.
Worst Ideas of the Week
10 of the dimmest....
It appears now that Sen. Judd Gregg, R-NH, is headed to the Department of Commerce as President Barack Obama's second Republican cabinet appointment. Obama's first choice for the slot, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, withdrew after concerns arose about questionable state contracts and contributions to his campaigns.
Adam Britely at NetRightNation.com cites an unnamed source in New Hampshire GOP circles saying Gregg has been offered the job by Obama and has accepted it. Presumably an announcement will come tomorrow or Tuesday from the White House.
The appointment is especially significant because Gregg's departure from the Senate opens up the possibility that his replacement will be a Democrat, who would then be the 60th donkey in the Senate, thus giving Obama a super-majority capable of steamrollering whatever is left of significant GOP opposition.
Britely claims, however, that Gregg and New Hampshire Gov. John Lynch have agreed that the latter will appoint a "moderate" Republican like Gregg as his successor rather than a Democrat. It's difficult to see how Lynch would benefit from such a course and one can easily imagine him getting an impeachment or recall drive by disaffected Democrats as his reward for appointing a Republican.
In any case, the prospect of Gregg accepting Obama's appointment raises some interesting questions about the ideological makeup of...
Nearly four months and almost $300 billion after President Bush and the Democratic Congress led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid enacted the Toxic Asset Recovery Program (TARP), the Government Accounting Office (GAO) says adequate transparency and accountability measures aren't in place.
In a masterfully understated paragraph of governmentese, the GAO auditors summarized their findings, saying:
"Treasury has continued to develop a system for detecting noncompliance with key requirements of the program but has not yet finalized its plans. Further, Treasury has made limited progress in formatting articulating and communicating an overall strategy for TARP, continuing to respond to institution- and industry-specific needs by, for example, making further capital purchases and offering loans to the automobile industry. In addition, it has not yet developed a strategic approach to explain how its various programs work together to fulfill TARP’s purposes or how it will use the remaining TARP funds. While GAO does not question the need for swift responses in the current economic environment, the lack of a clearly articulated vision has complicated Treasury’s ability to effectively communicate to Congress, the financial markets, and the public on the benefits of TARP and has limited its ability to identify personnel...
Examiner Editorial:
Loony lefties like Rep. John Conyers are determined to throw George Bush, Karl Rove and other Republicans into jail, but these Democrats forget that the headsman's axe that waits at the end of this road will, sooner or later, fall on their necks, too.
Irwin Stelzer:
A trade war may result from Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's biggest blunder - his intemperate remarks about China during his confirmation hearing
Timothy P. Carney:
A Washington toy story reminds again why bureaucratic regulation almost always helps the Big Guys crush the Little Guys in the market.
Tapscott's Copy Desk:
Some good news - and a fun interview on Fox Business News - on the Card Check issue.
There are rumblings about on Capitol Hill that suggest the irresistable tide pushing passage of the horribly misnamed Employee Free Choice Act - aka Card Check - is beginning to slow down a bit. For one thing, the opposition is beginning to lob some heavy artillery at EFCA in the form of a new national survey and a national ad campaign based on the results.
The Coalition for a Democratic Workplace's Brian Worth describes the new ads as reinforcing the fact "that Big Labor’s sales campaign about the job-killing Employee Free Choice Act isn’t working. Our polling shows that workers overwhelmingly reject attempts by union bosses to replace secret ballot elections with their card-check scheme.”
Specifically, the CDW spots highlight EFCA advocates problem with rank and file workers:
* 85% of union households favor having a federally supervised election as a means to “protect the individual rights of workers” and clearly see secret ballot elections as a basic right.
* 65% of union members would be less likely to vote for a member of Congress who voted to take away the secret ballot.
* Further exemplifying union worker distaste for the Employee Free Choice Act, 72% agreed that the binding arbitration provision in the legislation is “unwise” and “risky”.
* Despite opposition from their own rank and file workers,...
Examiner Editorial:
The liberal steamroller in Congress is pushing D.C. voting rights again and here we are - again - yelling "not so fast."
And just in case you missed it, Wednesday's editorial was a good one, too - second thoughts in Congress on Card Check. Folks, we can win this thing!
Chris Stirewalt:
No surprises in the RNC's national chairman contest.
Meghan Cox Gurdon:
It's a snow day!
Examiner OpEds:
Paul Chesser on the National Teach-in on Global Warming.
Jens Laurson and George A. Pieler on the fat wars.
Examiner Editorial:
The toughest choice facing President Obama is how to cut government.
Quin Hillyer:
Class-action lawsuit reforms are progressing in the states even as Congress appears ready to move the other...
Examiner editorial:
With the Obama White House, it's here a czar, there a czar, everywhere a czar, but, for the trial lawyers, it's a policy for payola.
Barbara Hollingsworth:
Did you see the tear-stained face in the other crowd?
Michael Marshall:
On keeping a D-Day perspective on the crisis on Wall Street.
Examiner Editorial:
Just look at California and Maryland.
Michael Reagan:
Barack Obama is a great orator but that inaugural address was a poor speech
Sunday Reflections:
Michelle Bernardlooks at the crisis in the Gaza Strip "from the Palestinian perspective."
Brightest Lights of the Week
Worst Ideas of the...
From "Grown-Up Digital" by Don Tapscott
"These are the eight norms of the Net Generation. They value freedom - to be who they are, freedom of choice. They want to customize everything, even their jobs. They learn to be skeptical, to scrutinize what they see and read in the media, including the Internet. They value integrity - being honest, considerate, transparent, and abiding by their committments. They're great collaborators, with friends online and at work. They thrive on speed. They love to innovate."...
Examiner Editorial:
Is there no end to the madness?
Timothy P.Carney:
Here's the question our new president doesn't want you to ask.
Irwin Stelzer:
Soon, energy reality will intrude on Obama's enviros.
Ed Frank:
Signs of intelligent online life on the Right
The Daily Outrage:
Mississippi travelin'...
Want to do something tangible to express your opposition to the $825 billion Obama/Reid/Pelosi economic (de)stimulus bill besides calling, emailing and writing your congressmen? Americans for Prosperity (AFP) have just put up an online petition drive at NoStimulus.com that should become a rallying point for opponents.
And if, in addition to the stimulus bucks, you also want to know where all those billions of tax dollars being handed over to .... somebody on Wall Street or somewhere in the financial community are actually going, then you need to know about Chasing the Pork wiki and the Bailout Bear blog associated with it.
Besides the actual petition itself, NoStimulus.com includes links to vital information and analyses of the stimulus proposal, as well as a link to a nifty letter generator that goes to all of the news media outlets in your specific area. All you have to do is put in your zip code. There are also links to talking points about the package and other useful material.
Why is AFP doing it? Here's how they explain it on the NoStimulus.com web site:
"Washington liberals have proposed an $825 billion debt bill and we need your help to stop the runaway government spending.
"President Obama and Congress are using the cover of economic hardship to pursue a permanent increase in the size and scope of government. This is by far the biggest debt package...
Examiner Editorial:
Presidents ought to be able to pick their cabinets without undue interference from Congress, but where's the loyal opposition when clear ethical violations are involved?
Chris Stirewalt:
Tallyho! Time to talk to Geithner about his Turbo Tax problem.
Meghan Cox Gurdon:
There they go again in the public schools indoctrinating our kids.
Examiner Special Report:
How one good man's intentions took him from a fuel cell to a jail cell.
Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd is the Connecticutt Democrat who got sweetheart loans from Countrywide Financial, one of the biggest beneficiaries of the sub-prime mortgage explosion and a major contributor to the economic crisis that resulted. Dodd promised last July to make public all of the paperwork regarding the loans, but has yet to do so.
Now along comes Sen. Jim DeMint, the South Carolina Republican who with Sen. Tom Coburn, R-OK, is one of the Senate's most aggressive and determined foes of the earmark-inspired culture of spending corruption that has gripped Congress in recent years. DeMint is joining the banking panel in the 111th Congress.
Sounds like DeMint is looking forward to this new committee assignment:
“I’m excited about the opportunity to fight on behalf of the millions of Americans who want to maintain a strong, free-market economy. The level of government intrusion in our economy over the past year is alarming, and I intend to do everything I can to stop these failed policies.
"Our economy is in distress, but I do not believe our path to prosperity will be found through increasing government spending, withdrawing from the global marketplace, or making it harder to create jobs and attract investment here at home. We must secure America's prosperity by promoting a sound dollar, expanding our trading partnerships, and...
Well, yes, it is true because Moyers has aired a tremendous report on how the Senate under the leadership of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid beat back a masterful legislative manuever by Sen. Jim DeMint, R-SC, to force public disclosure of earmarks. The segment focuses heavily on DeMint and the Seatlle Times excellent expose last year of the earmark racket in defense spending.
The segment is a little long but it tells the story thoroughly of how Reid and the rest of the earmarkers used legislative fraud to mislead the American people. Well worth the time....
01/21/09 2:49 PM
President Barack Obama's inauguration drew what appears to be the largest event crowd ever to the nation's capital, with estimates of more than 1.5 million people attending. But the Obama inauguration drew a smaller TV audience than President Ronald Reagan's first inaugural in 1981.
The Hollywood Reporter's James Hibbert notes the numbers:
"Early numbers from Nielsen Media Research say 29.2% of households from the nation's top markets watched network coverage of Obama's inauguration -- the most in recent decades.
Obama's preliminary household rating is bigger than any presidential inauguration audience in at least 28 years.
Ronald Reagan's first inauguration in 1981 drew a larger final rating, 37.4%. There's a chance Obama's viewership could surpass Reagan's when the national tallies are released (since 29% of households account for a larger number of people now than in 1981).
Obama's figure includes coverage on 14 broadcast and cable networks across 56 metered markets. And it doesn't factor online viewing, which was significant. Viewers watching the inauguration broke streaming video traffic records for CNN.com, FoxNews.com and MSNBC.com."
For more on the Hibbert analysis, go here.
Not all was sweetness and light during the inaugural festivities yesterday. There were a number of boos when President George W. Bush first appeared on the inaugural platform,...
Examiner Editorial:
ReadtheStimulus.org has made it easy for anybody with an Internet connection to read all 334 pages of the $825 billion economic stimulus bill. And boy are they finding interesting stuff already!
Noemie Emery:
Former President George W. Bush's legacy is hidden right here in plain sight for all to see.
Jay Ambrose:
Today is the first day of the rest of Barack Obama's tenure in the White House and the easy part is behind him.
Dim Bulb:
Fresh from taking her clothes off for Playboy .....
The Daily Outrage:
What happens when federal road funds somehow end up being spent on historic light fixtures....
Some initial thoughts on President Barack Obama's inaugural address:
First, a small but important detail in one short passage struck me. In his remarks about the sacrifices of previous generations of American soldiers, Obama noted that "for us, they fought and died, in places like Concord and Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe Sahn."
That sequence from the Revolution to the Civil War to WWII to the seige at Khe Sahn during the Vietnam war is notable for its inclusion of the latter to a place in the American military pantheon.
Considering the years of domestic conflict and bitter division over Vietnam, the inclusion of Khe Sahn by a president drawn from the Democratic party is hopefully a mark of universal acceptance of the heroism and honor of the men and women who fought in Vietnam. It's long past time.
Second, Obama recalled almost explicitly a central theme of Reagan's 81 address:
"Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions - who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short. For they have forgotten what this country has already done; what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose, and necessity to courage."
Similarly, towards the end of his address, Reagan recalled the determination of a young American soldier during WWI and the importance of his example to the...
My friend and valued colleague Quin Hillyer has an important column in today's edition of The Washington Examiner, one that is well worth reading and thinking about in the serious manner in which one would contemplate careful advice from a trusted confidant on an urgent matter.
Regardless how his presidency is viewed from a policy perspective at its end, Barack Obama's ascension ot the White House is among the most important milestones in American history. Today America entrusts its highest office to a man whose mother was white and whose father was black. Thus, Obama's mixed heritage is an especially apt metaphor for what this nation has long strived to be and presently becomes in perhaps the most concrete manner possible.
It has been a very long time coming. Race has been the Achilles Heel of the American dream since decades before the Declaration of Independence when New England captains first began carrying captured black men and women from Africa to Charleston and other ports in the South to be sold into slavery.
Race almost prevented the adoption of the Constitution and was settled only for a time by the prudential efforts of James Madison, Roger Sherman and James Wilson during the convention in Philadelphia. And it almost tore the nation apart forever after Lincoln's "House Divided" speech in 1858 and John Brown's Harper's Ferry raid the following year...
Examiner Editorial:
What a very long road America has traveled to come to this day.
Quin Hillyer
Now with that settled, can we stop talking about...
Examiner Editorial:
Chris Dodd, Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank are demonstrating new levels of hypocrisy by claiming the Bush administration was solely responsible for the lack of transparency on the first $350 billion of TARP spending that the Democrats are now supposedly fixing with the second $350 billion.
Barbara Hollingsworth:
Fairfax County Public Schools bureaucrats get a shiny new headquarters. Fairfax parents and students get the shaft.
Donald Hense:
The success of the D.C. charter schools advances Dr. Martin Luther King's dream on the education front.
GovernmentAttic.org has got to be one of the most unusual and potentially most beneficial sites on the Internet concerning the federal government.
Here's how the site organizers describe it:
"GovernmentAttic.org provides electronic copies of hundreds of interesting Federal Government documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. Fascinating historical documents, reports on items in the news, oddities and fun stuff and government bloopers, they're all here. Think of browsing this site as rummaging through the Government's Attic -- hence our name."
And true to their description, it doesn't much rummaging about on the site to see that there really is an incredible amount of interesting stuff here. In just a few minutes, I found IG reports on cases closed at various departments and agencies, complaints to the FCC about such popular TV shows as "Desperate Housewives" and "Mad Men," a District of Columbia government training manual for parking enforcement officers (writing parking tickets is what D.C. government does best), and two State Department documents from the 1970s concerning Chinese leaders. And believe me, that only scratches the surface.
One caveat: The site tends to focus primarily on materials and documents gathered from FOIAs submitted to defense and intelligence agencies, so there is much more material from those...
Want a little light reading to make the time go by on this dreary January Sunday? Well, how about spending a little time reading up on how President Barack Obama and the Democrats in Congress plan to give hundreds of billions of your tax dollars to their buddies? Thanks to the online penomenom known as "crowd-sourcing," you can join with hundreds of other people all over the country doing the same thing and do something in the process to increase public understanding of what is actually being proposed.
You can now read the actual text of the $825 billion and growing Democratic economic stimulus package at a brand new web site called ReadtheStimulus.org, thanks to The Heritage Foundaiton, Kithbridge.com, Citizens Against Government Waste, the National Taxpayers Union, Club for Growth, FreedomWorks, Americans For Prosperity and Lighthouse Strategies and Consulting. Kithbridge, by the way, is Rob Neppell, the conservative online wizard/activist who initiated the project.
The entire 334-page text is available in both text and pdf formats, and you can put your comments and observations on individual provisions of the proposal on the page in which it appears. Trackbacks are also enabled on the site. There's also a widget on the site that lists the most commented upon provisions, the most read pages and other aspects of the project.
Perhaps most important, the site's...
Examiner Editorial:
Who exactly in the Obama era will be defining what jobs were "saved" and how?
Sunday Reflection:
Byron York looks at the new Geithner Precedent for determining what offenses are now trivial.
Michael Reagan:
Is Hillary Clinton advocating "smart power" or just dumb policy?
The Hot List:
Brightest Ideas of the Week
Don't Think So:
Worst Ideas of the...
Does this prove Democrats are:
A. Most willing to do whatever it takes to win political battles?
B. Better than Republicans at adding up precinct-by-precinct voter registration totals?
C. More likely than Republicans to appreciate modern art?
D. Addicted to Rorschach tests?
HT:...
01/16/09 7:40 AM
Some of the most creative and important work being done anywhere on the Right is found at the Sam Adams Alliance. One of the best things these folks do is recognize and reward the finest examples of citizen activism around the country via the Sammies Awards.
This is one tremendous program, friends, and I encourage you to enter it, tell your friends and neighbors about it, and do everything else you can think of to advance the Sammies. Here's how all the basic info on the awards:
The Sam Adams Alliance Proudly Announces the 2nd Annual Sammies Awards
Calling all Government Watchdogs --- It’s time your love of liberty was rewarded with a cash purse totaling $40,000!
That’s right --- $40,000! But hurry, entry deadline is February 23, 2009.
The Sam Adams Alliance is proud to announce the 2nd Annual Sammies Awards with expanded opportunities to win. The Sammies were created to reward the hard and often unappreciated work of bloggers, filmmakers, open records champions and other government watchdogs committed to advancing freedom and economic liberty.
…and the categories are:
* Best Video: $5,000 cash prize Best State/Local-level Blogger: $5,000 cash prize
* Sunshine Award: $5,000 cash prize
* Modern-Day Sam Adams: $10,000 cash prize
* Tea Party Award: $5,000 cash prize Plus four brand new categories for 2009
For entry, specific details and last...
Examiner Editorial:
Presidents should be able to name the cabinet members of their choice, except in cases of clear ethical violations ... like failure to pay your taxes.
Timothy P. Carney:
Do you know who is the secret telecommunications lobbyist on Obama's team?
Irwin Stelzer:
It's going to be a long four years, so find a pleasant place to think, to write and to plan the Right restoration.
Mark Tapscott:
Faux transparency on the Democrats economic stimulus bill
Examiner Oped:
NAM's Jeri Kubicki sees fertile new fields of litigation riches for trial lawyers in the Lily Ledbetter Pay Fairness Act.
The Daily Outrage:
Medical waste at the CDC.
Dim Bulb:
The distracting Rep. Charlie Rangel
Have a great weekend, folks. Better rest up good for the fun and games on Monday and Tuesday.
Democrats in the House are congratulating themselves for allegedly including historic levels of transparency and accountability in the $825 billion economic stimulus bill draft they released today. And indeed there are some definite steps forward in the draft, but a modestly close reading reveals that most of the "transparency" in this proposal is of the faux kind.
Consider:
* The oversight reporting provisions expressly do NOT go beyond the Freedom of Information Act, and all its exemptions are incorporated to allow redaction of data before it’s given to the public. That means, for example, any private company receiving funds under the act can claim exemption under the commercial privilege exemption. Even if, as is likely, the exemption shouldn't be applied in their particular case, they can be confident that nobody will challenge them because FOIA litigation is notoriously slow and expensive.
* If including the FOIA commercial privilege exemption isn't sufficient to make the point, the legislation also says that all information that is “proprietary” under ANY state or federal law or regulation is also exempted from disclosure. That virtually assures nobody filing FOIAs will get any document that can be construed under even the most outrageous reading of any state or federal law or regulation.
* It is encouraging that a website, www.recovery....
Examiner Editorial:
An Examiner investigation finds multiple deaths and injuries over a period of years have resulted from FAA's failure to require a simple safety device.
Examiner Special Report:
Gliding Toward Disaster in the Air: Tragedies and near-misses continue as FAA delays.
Visual flight rules aren't enough.
Warnings began years ago.
A timeline of key events.
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What is a transponder?
For More Information
Chris Stirewalt:
A little less transparency, please.
Meghan Cox Gurdon:
I miss our once-partisan Washington
The Daily Outrage
Doolittle's earmark does a lot for a California movie theater.
Dim Bulb:
Treasury Secretary Nominee Tim...
Examiner Editorial:
U.S. Border Patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean deserve pardons, as do Scooter Libby and the three Americans convicted of violating a Honduran lobster packaging regulation.
Noemie Emery
Obama as America's model president.
Jay Ambrose:
Truth will out for George W. Bush.
The Daily Outrage:
Clinton legislative favors aided campaign donor
Dim Bulb:
Sen. Patrick...
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has climbed down from his initial refusal to allow the seating of Roland Burris to succeed President-elect Barack Obama as the junior senator from Illionis.
Burris was appointed by embattled Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich despite warnings and pleas from Democrats in that state and in Washington, D.C. that he not name anybody, pending resolution of charges by U.S. Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald that he sought to sell the appointment for personal gain.
Burris was the first African-American to win statewide office in Illinois, gaining the Comptroller office in 1978. He also served as Illinois Attorney General from 1991 to 1995. But his career has also seen a string of defeats, including an unsuccessful run for the U.S. Senate and multiple attempts to gain the governor's mansion during the 1980s and 1990s.
In recent years, he has run a lobbying and consulting firm, Burris and Lebed, in Illinois. Since being named by Blagojevich to succeed Obama, Burris has been portrayed in the mainstream media mostly as something of a venerated political figure from a past generation.
But Illinois campaign finance records reveal another side of Burris that may give pause to those worried by the growing congressional culture of lobbyists wielding special interest influence to gain questionable earmarks, pork barrel spending contracts and insider favors with...
Examiner Editorial:
Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are making Uncle Joe Cannon look like a legislative pussycat. Do congressional GOPers have enough starch in them to respond?
Quin Hillyer:
President Bush has less than a week left in office to do the right thing for Scooter...
Examiner Editorial:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and congressional Democrats are pushing two bills that will be a bonanza for their trial lawyer allies.
Barbara Hollingsworth:
So, the federal government is going to fund the Dulles Rail Project after all. Listen closely and you can already heear the billions of tax dollars going down the drain.
Examiner OpEd:
Former FDA Commissioner Peter J. Pitts says government price controls can't fix health...
Sen. Tom Coburn, R-OK, released the following statement this afternoon on the Reid omnibus monster bill:
“Today’s action in the Senate shows that the greatest threat to change is a Congress that is addicted to power, pork and the politics of the past. In a time of economic turmoil, the United States Senate has bigger fish to fry than a pork-laden omnibus lands bill that puts parochial projects that spend $1 billion to rescue 500 salmon in California ahead of our serious economic challenges. We could face an historic $1.8 trillion deficit next year. Spending money we don’t have on many projects we don’t need is unconscionable,” Dr. Coburn said, adding that it is reckless for Congress to spend $10 billion on new parks and other areas when the National Park Service currently has a $9.6 billion maintenance backlog.
“I’m also disappointed the Senate Majority Leader refused to allow any amendments to this legislation and instead chose to hold a rare Sunday vote when few Americans are watching C-SPAN. Had the Majority Leader accepted my offer to limit debate and amendments in all likelihood this bill would have already passed the Senate with a full, open and transparent debate,” Dr. Coburn said.
Dr. Coburn noted that the bill contained the following egregious provisions. Dr. Coburn attempted to strike these provisions but...
01/11/09 3:08 PM
The Senate is moving toward passage today of a massive omnibus measure that combines 160 separate bills in a 1,300+ page monstrosity. When it passes, and it will pass because Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's petty tyranny hasn't permitted even one Republican amendment in six months - hardly anybody who votes for it will have read it.
Sen. Jim DeMint, R-SC, just delivered the following remarks that highlight everything that is wrong with Congress. This is a rush transcript:
"Mr. DeMint: Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you very much. The platform for the inauguration is almost complete. They're putting the finishing touches on it. I think America, with good reason, is excited with new hope at the idea of change. This is something we need in our country. We've obviously gotten bogged down in many areas.
"But I’m afraid, as I walked in the senate chamber today; I smell the same stale air of good 'ol boy, pork-laden, lobbyist-driven politics. Folks, we're here on a Sunday voting about something in the middle of a recession, very difficult economic times, many critical issues, but the majority has asked us to come back today to vote on a conglomeration of bills which no one has read.
"You know the chairman said that it's been -- the committee has had it posted on the committee site for a few days. But as of Friday, in anyone in America wanted to go to...
When public officials close the doors to make decisions, you can bet they are doing something they don't want taxpayers to know about. Doesn't make any difference whether the officials are Democrats or Republicans, liberals or conservatives. The Fullerton (CA) city council just provided a perfect illustration of this maxim.
"Now comes Fullerton's city council, which this week voted against a contract to increase most government workers' pensions by 25 percent, retroactive to the employee's hire date. The council had approved the new deal in a closed door session, according to The Orange County Register, but then backed away from it when one council member made the pension increase public," reports The Sacremento Bee's Jon Ortiz on The State Worker blog.
"Retiring Fullerton employees get up to 60 percent of their final year's pay; the new plan would have boosted that to 75 percent of final year's pay and counted all years of service in the formula," Ortiz added.
Note the mere public exposure of what they had done in secret caused the council members to reverse a decision that, had it stood unchanged, would have added significantly to the long-term liability of Fullerton taxpayers.
Public employee pensions at all levels of government are a constant temptation to public officials, in part because benefits calculations tend to be somewhat esoteric for...
Examiner Editorial:
Barack Obama should take a careful look at the early results of Massachusetts' universal coverage reform from 2006.
Sunday Reflection:
Sally Pipes of the Pacific Research Institute sees nothing coming from the Obama-Daschle prescription for fixing America's health care ills.
Michael Reagan:
Is anybody in charge at Team Obama?
Brightest Ideas of the Week
Worst Ideas of the...
Examiner Editorial:
Unfortunately, there appears to be a good chance that the comedian is also going to be sworn-in as Minnesota's newest U.S. Senator.
Timothy P. Carney:
Now Obama gets a chance to pull back from the Bill Richardson style of politics.
Irwin Stelzer:
Give the man credit - Obama knows where he wants to take the U.S.
Examiner OpEd:
Here are four questions Obama's Labor Secretary nominee should be asked (but probably won't answer, even if she is asked).
The Daily Outrage:
What's that stench coming from the U.S. Senate?
Dim Bulb:
Salah Sultan should be deported.
Chris Stirewalt:
Reid is a former boxing champion but you'd never know it from his recent bout of cave-ins on important issues.
Meghan Cox Gurdon:
Getting back into the swing of things is not always easy.
Examiner Editorial:
Carol Browner - Barack Obama's White House Climate Czar - is a socialist. No, really, she is and it's right there in the open.
Examiner OpEds:
Karen Hart says there go those GOPers again.
Amy Kjose explains how to avoid future $54 million pants suits.
Michael Taube says no, "Senator Al Franken" is no typo.
Ira Mehlman wants to make sure economic stimulus jobs go to U.S. citizens.
The Daily Outrage:
Meaty earmarks for Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin.
Dim Bulb:
Reid is ready to flout Minnesota law on behalf of Al Franken.
My gosh, my fingers are exhausted from so much typing on one day's worth of Examiner editorial highlights! Have a great day,...
Examiner Editorial:
Gov. Tim Kaine is kidding himself or his fellow Virginians if he thinks he can do two full-time jobs at once - governor and Democratic National Committee Chairman.
Noemie Emergy:
The Washington Examiner's newest columnist looks at the sad reality surrounding Caroline Kennedy's "campaign" to be New York's next U.S. Senator.
Jay Ambrose:
The bill for President Barack Obama's massive economic stimulus package will come due, probably sooner than later.
Dim Bulb:
Las Vegas Mayor Oscar...
01/06/09 6:39 PM
.... it will be clear that America has sunk below even the Romans. Whereas the Emperor Caligula appointed his horse as a Senate Pro-Consul, we will have settled for sending the horse's ass to our...
Examiner Editorial:
D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty apparently believes being his wife's best buddy would make somebody a dandy utilities regulator. The Examiner demures. Actually, we LOL.
Quin Hillyer:
At the outset of his first term in the White House, President Bush re-nominated a highly qualified Clinton judicial nominee the GOP-led Senate had not confirmed. Will President-elect Barack Obama do the same for a superb Bush nominee?
The Daily Outrage:
Senators Byron Dorgan and Kent Conrad of North Dakota want to spent more than a quarter of a million of your federal tax dollars for a peace garden shared with Canada. We are not making this up.
Dim Bulb:
Former Illinois GOP congressman Ray LaHood was a master at pork barrel politics, even though it undermined his party's public image and cost it a congressional majority. Now he gets to play in the earmark sandbox at the Treasury Department, courtesy of Barack Obama.
Examiner OpEd:
Lt. Gen. Josiah Bunting of the Inter-Collegiate Studies Institute says a new survey reveals that too many Americans are abyssmally ignorant of their country's history and principles.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg does a marvelous job in this interview with a CNN anchor in demolishing the moral relativism behind the attacks on Israel for retaliating too strongly against Hamas missile attacks launched from Gaza. First time I watched this tape, I found myself cheering Bloomberg. First time that's ever happened.
07/02/08 12:55 PM
Personal Democracy Forum panel on "the cross-partisan movement for political transparency and watchdogging government from below:" (Right to left) Panel moderator Ellen Miller, co-founder and executive director of the Sunlight Foundation, Matt Stoller of MyDD (mostly obscured), myself, and W. David Stephenson, who blogs on homeland security issues. (Photo by Robert Cox, Media Bloggers Association).
It's not often that one gets the opportunity to be among and converse with several hundred of the smartest people in the world, but that is precisely what I was able to do last week as a participant at Personal Democracy Forum 2008 at Rose Hall in New York City's Lincoln Center complex.
It was my first PDF and, despite only being able to attend the second day, it was a memorable experience because I came away with a heightened sense that we are on the cusp of profound, even revolutionary changes in government and public policy thanks to the Internet. Being a conservative, I don't use that word "revolution" lightly.
I was in fact continually reminded throughout my time at PDF of Alexander Hamilton's prophetic observation at the outset of The Federalist Papers, America's most important contribution to serious political thought:
"It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and...
06/27/08 7:09 AM
Some folks are asking what I meant yesterday on MSNBC during an interview with Chris Jansing when I said that presumptive GOP presidential nominee John McCain's "three biggest problems are John McCain, George Bush and history, and he's yet to effectively address any of the three."
To win, McCain must motivate the conservative base of the Republican Party to get out and work, vote and contribute on his behalf at record levels if he is to have any hope of defeating the onslaught of money, media and manipulation coming from Democrat Barack Obama and his allies.
The problem is McCain simply isn't credible with these voters as a fellow conservative and he has done almost nothing to give them reasons to think otherwise. The lone exception here is McCain's recent emphasis on opening up the Outer Continental Shelf to drilling for oil and natural gas, but even here he blunted the sharpness of his position by continuing to oppose drilling in the Artic National Wildlife Refuge.
This mixed message - is McCain a conservative, a "maverick" or just another Washington politician? - is reflected in surveys like the most recent Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg Poll that found only 58 percent of conservatives are excited about the prospect of voting for the Arizona senator, according to the Times' Doyle McManus:
"McCain suffers from a pronounced 'passion gap,' especially...
06/13/08 8:12 PM
Interesting piece in Politico by Micah Sifry and Andrew Rasiej, recalling something they wrote four years ago in which they predicted the Howard Dean phenomenon that appeared to be a failure actually was the forerunner of profound changes in politics, changes that among much else have propelled a candidate like Barack Obama to the brink of nomination for the presidency by one of the nation's two major political parties.
Sifry and Rasiej offer some useful thoughts on what it all means:
"If there’s anything we’ve learned about the Internet and politics in these past four years, it is this:
"1. We’re in a gigantic transition from capital-intensive, broadcast-media-driven politics to something that has almost no barriers to entry, involves millions of people in helping to create messages, groups and campaigns, and is out of centralized control.
"2. Change is a constant, and as Yogi Berra once said, predictions are hard, especially about the future. Two years ago, no one had even heard of YouTube; now candidates announce their campaigns on that site.
"3. This isn’t a fad. Voter-generated activism, outside the control of the campaigns, has become a full-fledged political force. People who dismiss online politicking as 'the bar scene from ‘Star Wars' have no idea what they’re talking about."
Yes, yes and yes. Clay...
06/13/08 6:30 PM
No matter how often one experiences the moment, it always comes as a shock to get the news that somebody famous and not yet old has suddenly died. The Examiner newsroom fell silent earlier today when the news was announced by Tom Brokaw that Meet the Press host Tim Russert had died in the NBC Washington Bureau's newsroom.
I didn't know Russert, though years ago when he was Sen. Daniel P. Moynihan's chief of staff and I was Sen. Orrin Hatch's communications director, he and I occasionally passed in the hall in the Russell Senate Office Building and exchanged the quiet pleasantries that recalled the manners and customs that once enabled partisan warriors to co-exist in mutual respect and dignity.
Still, it's painful to hear of the passing of someone of achievement with whom you share a profession and a passion, if not friendship. Russert was an old-guard liberal of the New York Irish-Catholic variety, a blue-collarish guy from Buffalo who had that bigger-than-life presence about him.
Russert was host of Meet the Press longer than any previous person and was the author of two best-selling books, both inspired by his father, "Big Rus." Godspeed to a fine...
06/12/08 5:08 PM
This is the kind of thing that happens when a presidential administration is at the end of the rope, nobody is keeping an eye on the store and decisions are made without proper review. President Bush today gave the nation's highest civilian award to a list of highly distinguished and deserving Americans, including Gen. Peter Pace of the Marines (ret.) and Dr. Benjamin Carson of Johns Hopkins University Medical School.
But there among the honorees is former Clinton administration HHS secretary Donna Shalala. Giving this woman any medal - much less the Medal of Freedom - is preposterous, not because of her tenure working for Slick Willie, but because in the years before and since, when she proved herself to be a devoted enemy of freedom of speech and intellect on the Americancampus.
I would go on, but I am simply dumbfounded that the Bush people have allowed this award to be made. Win Myers at Democracy Project explains why this award simply defies justification:
Of all the educators in the country to choose from, including those who have suffered under the type of politically correct regimes that Shalala has built up and overseen, the choice of Donna Shalala to receive our nation's highest civilian award is beyond puzzling; it is obscene.
Shalala was architect of the infamous speech code at Wisconsin which, before it was declared unconstitutional in 1991, was among the...
06/04/08 4:15 PM
So what if it imposes the largest single tax increase in American history without ever calling it a tax? So what if it creates the biggest expansion of the federal bureaucracy since FDR was New Dealing in the White House? So what if it will millions of Americans their jobs and set America's economy back decades?
Why should the Senate have to actually hear what's inthe Lieberman-Warner bill?
That's the cry of the left as Senate GOPers today refused to allow the Senate to proceed with consideration of Lieberman-Warner without the full text of the bill being read aloud. Here's how the National Wildlife Federation's Jeremy Symons puts it:
"Senate Republicans are literally throwing the book at this bill to help oil companies block any action on global warming and a clean energy future. By stalling this bill, Senate Republicans can only stall America's economy. We need to jumpstart our economy with action now to invest in new technology and create clean energy jobs.
"The choice is clear - recharge the economy or let it sit in neutral. Move forward with legislation that addresses an enormous problem while transforming our energy future or stick your head in the sand and hide behind Big Oil propaganda.
"America is ready for a new energy future. If opponents succeed in blocking action on climate change, they will block America's path to a new and stronger economy....
06/03/08 2:56 PM
A National Wildlife Federation spokesman is spinning Monday's 74-14 Senate vote to bring up for debate the Lieberman-Warner global warming proposal as evidence that opposition to the cap and trade nightmare is rapidly falling apart:
"On Monday, the U.S. Senate opened debate on the Climate Security Act (Boxer-Warner-Lieberman Substitute Amendment, S. 3036). The motion to proceed passed easily on a 74-14 vote, an indication that the vast majority of senators rejected the roadblock approach of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK).
"Nevertheless, Minority Leader McConnell launched a strategy of delaying the serious debate and votes on amendments to this legislation by forcing 30 hours of debate before the first votes begin.The stall tactics are a sure sign that the minority leader intends to make Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid choose between a lengthy floor fight on global warming and other pressing senate bills before the Fourth of July recess.
"While the debate about the Climate Security Act is still up in the air, with both sides uncertain how close the bill is to the 60 needed to overcome a filibuster, one thing is clear: the senators willing to side with Sen. Inhofe, who infamously claimed global warming was a "hoax," is down to 14. Republicans deserted Sen. Inhofe and Minority Leader McConnell in droves....
05/30/08 2:46 PM
There were 16 presidential elections between 1868 and 1928 and Democrats won in only four of those contests, with only two candidates, Woodrow Wilson and Grover Cleveland. More often, whenever it looked like a Democrat might have a shot at the White House, Republicans would "wave the bloody shirt." End of election story.
Waving the bloody shirt was as easy as GOP party leaders and candidates simply reminding Northern Republican voters that it was the overwhelmingly Democratic South that seceded in 1861 and ignited the Civil War, the most cataclysmic event in the nation's history. For more than half a century, that fact was an unavoidable and impassable obstacle for virtually all Democrats who nurtured dreams of becoming the nation's commander-in-chief.
What does this relic of American political history have to do with contemporary politics and campaigns? Well, the phenomenon is about to be repeated in a sense. The Senate takes up debate when it returns from the Memorial Day recess on S. 2191, the Warner-Lieberman bill known as "America's Security Act."
All three remaining presidential candidates support Warner-Lieberman or variations of it and the proposal has generated widespread enthusiasm in the mainstream media and among environmental activists. The proposal would cap the nation's greenhouse gas emissions - mainly carbon dioxide, which allegedly...
05/27/08 7:02 PM
American Thinker's Ned Barnett reports a developing public relations disaster for the Subway sandwich chain. Seems the geniuses in corporate PR decided to host an essay contest for students to write about "Every sandwich tells a story." Sounds like a good topic to inspire aspiring creative writers, right?
But then somebody decided to bar home-schooled students, allegedly because the winning entry would receive a prize - $5,000 worth of athletic equipment - suitable only for "real" schools. Michael Smith of the Home School Legal Defense Association shot that one down in flames with this letter to Subway officials.
Barnettestimates Subway may have offended as many as 10 millions Americans, counting the two million students, their parents, grandparents and sympathetic neighbors and friends. However many may actually decide to take their business to Quiznos or some other outlet, you can be certain the impact will be felt, unfortunately, most directly by the Subway franchisers who actually own and operate the...
05/27/08 4:56 PM
If you read nothing else today, check out Sen. Tom Coburn's oped in The Wall Street Journal. The title is "Republicans are in denail." Subscription is required, of course, but I think the Journal folks are putting this outside their firewall.
Here's the heart of Coburn's piece:
"Yet being a Republican isn't good enough anymore. Voters are tired of buying a GOP package and finding a big-government liberal agenda inside. What we need is not new advertising, but truth in advertising.
Becoming Republicans again will require us to come to grips with what has ailed our party – namely, the triumph of big-government Republicanism and failed experiments like the K Street Projectand "compassionate conservatism." If the goal of the K Street Project was to earmark and fund raise our way to a filibuster-proof "governing" majority, the goal of "compassionate conservatism" was to spend our way to a governing majority.
The fruit of these efforts is not the hoped-for Republican governing majority, but the real prospect of a filibuster-proof Democrat majority in 2009. While the K Street Project decimated our brand as the party of reform and limited government, compassionate conservatism convinced the American people to elect the party that was truly skilled at activist government: the Democrats."
How much longer till the GOP's...
05/23/08 6:58 PM
Lots of excitement and buzz here today because we just issued the following release about Mary Katharine Ham joining the staff as online editor for the new web site. I first met Mary Katharine when I was at The Heritage Foundation and she was editor of a couple of Heritage publications. I knew then she was headed for great things and her achievements in the years since have certainly borne that prediction out.
Here's the text of our release:
Townhall.com managing editor and regular Fox News guest Mary Katharine Ham is joining The Washington Examiner as online editor for the publication’s forthcoming new web site, dcexaminer.com, the newspaper announced today.
As online editor of dcexaminer.com, Ham will be responsible for overall management of the site’s news and editorial content and staff, as well as working with Examiner and outside resources on creative development of new features and functionality. She will work from the Examiner’s downtown Washington, D.C. newsroom and will start June 10.
“We are especially excited and proud to have Mary Katharine Ham join The Washington Examiner because she among the most respected young stars of online journalism and is also well-known to cable television and talk radio audiences through her regular appearances on ‘The O’Reilly Factor’ onFox News,” said Vivienne Sosnowski, editorial...
05/22/08 4:37 PM
More good news on the transparency in government front - a federal court has upheld the Labor Department's enforcement of the financial disclosure requirements of the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act.
The LMRDA requires reports from attorneys who make payments to unions or to union officials or other employees, either in cash or other things of value. An attorney who was legal counsel to the United Transportation Union sued, claiming the Labor Department lacked authority to compel such reports.
The decision was issued by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.
According to a statement issued by the Labor Department, the suit focused on web site advisories posted in 2005 and 2006 by the department's Office of Labor-Management Standards (OLMS), which oversee the disclosure system.
"The Web site advisory followed an OLMS investigation of corruption in the UTU that resulted in the felony conviction of four union officials. These officials pled guilty to conspiring with others to violate federal mail and wire fraud statutes, among others, by using their positions of authority to solicit and collect cash payments and other things of value from attorneys doing business or seeking to do business as designated legal counsels of the UTU," the Labor Department statement said.
“This decision is a victory for America's working men...
05/21/08 7:15 PM
Telephone logs of federal officials - including the First Lady - are unquestionably releasable on request under the federal Freedom of Information Act, so why is the National Archives being granted another year before it has to make such documents public?
The U.S. District Court granted a one-year stay in the case of Judicial Watch, Inc. v U.S. National Archives and Records Administration. Judicial Watch has been in court for years trying to get Hillary Clinton's telephone logs during her time as First Lady.
Following the ruling, Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton issued this statement:
“Federal law requires these documents be turned over to the American people within 20 days unless an agency presents evidence demonstrating why it should be allowed additional time. The Clinton Library took nearly two years before providing any documents to us. It is as simple as that. Our lawyers argued to the court that the Clinton Library failed to meet its substantial burden in requesting yet more time to produce the remainder of the records we requested.
“This is not about who gets their requests for records handled first, but whether an agency can violate the Freedom of Information Act with impunity.
“It is unacceptable for the American people to be told they will not receive the additional information about Hillary Clinton, to which they are legally entitled,...
05/21/08 4:46 PM
That's apparently the attitude that dominates the Democratic leadership in Congress, judging by the latest conference report on the Senate version of the 2009 budget bill. Earlier this year, Senate GOPers succeeded in adding Sec. 223 requiring that budget resolutions disclose how much the federal debt would increase or decrease if they become law, as well as how much the debt would rise or fall per person and how much of the Social Security surplus would be spent over the period covered by the budget.
The budget conference report filed yesterday by Senate and House Democratic leaders, however, has deleted Sec. 223. Weren't these same Members promising back in 2006 that they would conduct the public's business in an "open and honest" manner?
Must have been some fine print in that promise regarding the budget!
05/20/08 7:01 PM
Have these people no shame? Is there no depth to which Members of Congress like Rep. John Murtha won't stoop in order to protect their place at the hog trough? Rep. Jeff Flake is circulating the following Dear Colleague letter concerning the defense bill likely to be voted on later this week in the House:
May 19, 2008
THE EARMARK TWO-STEP:
ONE STEP FORWARD; TWO STEPS BACK
FY09 Defense Authorization Seeks to Protect Earmarks in Report Language
Dear Colleague:
The House of Representatives is likely to consider H.R. 5658, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2009, later this week. Unfortunately, a provision was included in the bill that would protect defense authorization pork in the joint explanatory report or committee reports from President Bush’s recent earmark executive order. Section 1431 of the bill would make Executive Order 13457 “inapplicable” to this specific act alone.
Issued in January 2008, Executive Order 13457 requires that “the number and cost of earmarks be reduced, that their origin and purposes be transparent, and that they be included in the text of the bills voted upon by the Congress.” Specifically, the executive order makes clear that “executive agencies should not commit, obligate, or expend funds on the basis of earmarks included in any non-statutory source, including requests in reports of...
05/20/08 5:47 PM
Who says all congressmen only vote to bring the maximum possible pork to their districts? Andy Roth at Club for Growth took a look at who voted against that monstrosity of a farm bill and how their districts ranked as recipients of farm subsidies for the past decade.
Turns out the district of Rep. Ron Kind, D-WI, ranked as the 30 biggest recipient yet he voted against the bill. Others Members who voted against the farm bill even though their districts ranked among the top 68 included: #37 - Ron Paul, R-TX, #42 - Mike Pence, R-IN, #48 - Jim Jordan, R-OH, Lynn Westmoreland, R-GA, #60 - Dan Burton, R-IN, #63 - Tom Petri, R-WI) and #68 - Devin Nunes, R-CA.
Check out Roth's post and note why he discourages praise for two Kansas Republicans who voted against the farm bill. And note, too, that Andy's work here is an illustration of the Computer-Assisted Research and Reporting (CARR) skills that I teach. Every blogger who is serious about doing in-depth analysis of public policy issues and politics needs CARR skills.
Note as well that the data on the farm subsidies was compiled by the Environmental Working Group, which has done superb work in this compilation for years and has worked with conservatives in Washington to eliminate these kinds of...
05/20/08 11:54 AM
North Carolina's John Locke Foundation has studied state and local government agencies in the Tar Heel state andrated them on how well they make their records, data and activities accessible to citizens. The results aren't encouraging for those who understand that, as Patrick Henry said, "the liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure when the transactions of their rulers may be kept from them."
John Hood and the rest of the outstanding crew at Locke are doing superb work in so many areas and the fact they are devoting significant resources to building public understand of and support for increased transparency in government at all levels is a tremendously positive development on the Right.
Conservatives should always remember that transparency is Big Government's worst enemy and our default position anytime the issue comes up for discussion ought to be in favor of more transparency, not less, unless there is an unquestionably compelling reason to make an exception.
You can read the full Locke report here.
Sunshine Week
FOIA
Freedom of Information
Public Right to Know
Open Government
Big...
05/20/08 11:44 AM
South Carolina's Sen. Jim DeMint has a superb piece upon NRO in which he argues that the conservative community in the nation's capital has become imprisoned in the glories of the past, especially of the Reagan years.
DeMint quotes conservative icon William F. Buckley as lamenting this state of affairs in an illuminating interview published during the final months of his life:
"A kind of mental lethargy now exists in my party. We are relying on these brilliant and successful policies of the past to be our principles of today. Thisis completely backwards. The greatness of conservatism has been an understanding that policies are derivatives of principles. Principles never change, policies do. The trick is finding the correct application of principle-based policies that fit our time.
"In his later years, the late great William F. Buckley Jr. seemed to understand this. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, he complained about an American Right that seemed rudderless. 'I think conservatism has become a little bit slothful,' Buckley told The Wall Street Journal.
"The Journal went on to write that Buckley’s private criticisms cut to the core even more; 'Part of it, [Buckley] believed, was that what used to be living ideas had become mummified doctrines to many in the conservative political class.'
"As Buckley once put it, these 'old rigidities'...
05/20/08 8:32 AM
President Bush has gotten a lot of grief from Barack Obama and others for his speech condemning appeasement before the Israeli Knesset, but Human Events editor Jed Babbin says the critics don't have a clue what they are talking about.
Notes Babbin:
"Is Obama an appeaser? Of course. But why? What is an appeaser? An appeaser may be a diplomat, but all diplomats are not appeasers. Diplomats buy and sell; appeasers just give things away. And that difference is something Barack Obama has yet to learn.
An appeaser is someone who is willing to compromise his nation’s interests without obtaining an equal or greater concession from the adversary. History’s most famous appeaser, Neville Chamberlain, gave the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia to Hitler in 1938 and received nothing in return. Having been appeased -- and thus given time to further build his military might -- Hitler attacked a year later, conquering Poland and igniting the largest and most murderous war in history.
In Churchill’s more literary definition, an appeaser is someone who feeds the crocodile, hoping it will eat him last."
Read the whole thing. And by the way, Babbin also has an essential book for those interested in understanding the relationship of the U.S. and China. The book's title is "In the words of our...
05/19/08 11:07 PM
Karl Rove, the man President Bush admiringly dubbed "the architect" following the successful Bush-Cheney re-election effort of 2004, has been encouraging congressional Republicans to "get their act together" before the November election brings another electoral disaster.
Rove's analysis was on full display Sunday on "Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace." Read the following exchange closely, noting especially the six points - three "strategic" and three "tactical" - he believes are essential to GOP recovery:
"WALLACE: Let's start with some numbers, because I know how you like numbers. Take a look at a recent New York Times poll which found that in a generic ballot question -- which party do you intend to vote for in November's House election? -- 50 percent chose the Democrat. Thirty-two percent said the Republican.
"And Congressman Tom Davis sent a 20-page memo to his GOP colleagues in which he said the political atmosphere facing House Republicans this November is the worst since Watergate. Is the situation that bad?
"FORMER BUSH POLITICAL ADVISOR KARL ROVE: The Republicans have got three things they need to do strategically and three things they need to do tactically. Strategically, they better get their act together with an aggressive agenda of reform here at home about the things people are talking around...
05/16/08 4:14 PM
Those who seek to understand why the GOP has lost three special congressional elections in 2008 in supposedly solidly Republican districts should read Peggy Noonan's column in today's edition of The Wall Street Journal.
The former Reagan speechwriter notes a quote from a Republican leader regarding the latest of the losses and adds a sharp retort that gets to the heart of why the party of Goldwater and Reagan is in its death throes as an effective vehicle of conservative reform:
"This was a real wakeup call for us," someone named Robert M. Duncan, who is chairman of the Republican National Committee, told The New York Times. This was after Mississippi. "We can't let the Democrats take our issues." And those issues would be? "We can't let them pretend to be conservatives," he continued. Why not? Republicans pretend to be conservative every day.(emphasis mine)
Exactly. Republican leaders, including President Bush and most of the party's congressional leaders, have for years talked the talk of being conservatives, but have hypocritically avoided walking the walk on virtually all the major domestic issues.
Faithful readers of this blog will recall a discussion from a couple years back between the "Tapscottians" and "Geraghtyites," as dubbed by Hugh Hewitt. I've purposely kept quiet on this issue since then out of hope that...
05/02/08 2:02 PM
Three special interests with the tightest grip on Democrats are the teachers unions, Big Labor and the plaintiffs bar. If any one of this powerful trio were to lose political effectiveness - i.e. money, media access and campaign volunteers on the ground - it would be a major blow to the Democrats.
Now, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers are being challenged to serve the public interests rather than the plaintiffs bar's interest by convening an investigation of the Milberg Weiss scandal and its implications for the legal system every American depends upon for justice.
House Minority Leader John Boehner issued the following letter to Pelosi and Conyers earlier today:
Congress of the United States
House of Representatives
May 2, 2008
The Honorable John Conyers, Jr.
Committee on the Judiciary
2138 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
Dear Chairman Conyers:
On May 19, 2008, trial attorney William Lerach is expected to report to federal prison to begin serving the prison term he received after pleading guilty to charges of criminal conspiracy in conjunction with a class action scheme involving his former law firm, formerly known as Milberg Weiss. This development will be the latest milestone in a steadily unfolding scandal that points to a cancerous growth within our nation’s economy -- an...
04/28/08 3:46 PM
It is unlikely that any other individual in American politics has been more ignorantly criticized on the editorial and news pages of the nation's major dailies during the past week than North Carolina Republican state chairman Linda Daves, as a result of the now-infamous "Obama is too extreme" television spot.
For example, The New York Times news reporter Michael Luo, for example, opined under his news byline that the "the ad a injects a potentially divisive racial element" in North Carolina's upcoming Democratic presidential primary between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Luo thus echoed Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean's claim that the ad was "racially divisive."
But how exactly can a television spot be racially anything when it only makes two factually unchallengeable statements and offers one entirely reasonable opinion about the implications of those two statements for North Carolina voters?
Now Daves is challenging her media critics (and those elsewhere) by demanding equal time. She's asking them to publish her response. My prediction is that fewer than half of them will. In any case, here's Daves' response:
In Defense of Our Ad
By Linda Daves
I flatly reject the accusations of racism directed at our party by the left-leaning editorial boards that have condemned our “Extreme” ad in the last week. From...
04/23/08 5:37 PM
Just imagine that the biggest part of the taxes you pay isn't to Uncle Sam in far-away Washington, but rather to your local community, the one controlled by an elected Mayor and a town council. And you know every one of these people because they are friends, neighbors, acquaintances from work or familiar faces from around the town.
And they know you, too, and not just because when you have a problem with something they are doing, or not doing, you know where to find them. And you do. Sometimes they agree with you and sometimes they don't, but they know who you are and like to keep you happy because your taxes pay their salaries.
Sound like an impossible dream? Well, not so long ago, that was the daily reality for most Americans. Donald Devine, vice president of the American Conservative Union and editor of its Battle Line publication, offers this description of the way we were:
"As recently as 1900, local government raised twice the revenue as the national government and six times as much as state governments. Then progressivism set out to eliminate small government diversity. From using the multi-service county rather than creating additional municipalities, to municipal consolidation reforms (creating one large city from scores of towns), to the encouragement of annexation of nearby unincorporated land, to simply making it difficult to create new municipalities,...
04/17/08 4:59 PM
The Senate will vote sometime this afternoon on competing amendments to the Technical Corrections bill from Sen. Tom Coburn, R-OK, and Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-CA, regarding the Coconut Road earmark scandal. The earmark was originally included in the 2005 transportation bill, but was mysteriously retained after Florida officials said they didn't want the funds.
Coburn's amendment would establish a bipartisan congressional investigative panel to determine who changed the bill's language regarding the earmark. The amendment from Boxer, who chairs the Senate's Environment and Public Works Committee that has jurisdiction over highway funding, has offered an alternative amendment asking the Justice Department to investigate.
But Boxer's amendment is seen among the Senate's band of earmark reformers as tantamount to no investigation because separation of powers disputes between the executive and legislative branch would tie a Justice Department probe up in the courts before it ever got anywhere.
Judicial Watch's Tom Fitton recently explained in The Washington Examiner how the Supreme Court "took a dive" on those very separation of powers issues in the case of Rep. William "Cold Cash" Jefferson, who is accused of taking bribes. FBI officials found $90,000 stashed in his freezer.
This afternoon, one of Boxer's senior staffers has circulated the following...
04/16/08 8:02 PM
Winston Churchill put it best when he said of appeasement that it is nothing more than bribing the alligator to eat you last. Churchill was referring to Hitler and the Nazis and their designs on conquering the world.
But the principle he enunciated is equally valid in the context of fighting all forms of virulent statism, from the mosque-state extremists of the Jihad to the environmental fanatics intent upon using global warming as the pretext for imposing a soul-less, unaccountable bureaucratic tyranny.
So what has sparked this observation, you ask? Check out President Bush's Rose Garden speech today proposing new steps by government "to put our nation on a path to slow, stop, and eventually reverse the growth of our greenhouse gas emissions."
The key assumption underlying Bush's approach is seen in what he said in the paragraph just prior to the one where the above quote appeared. There, Bush framed the essential issue (and note that he referred throughout his speech to the problem as "climate change," rather than global warming, a term that is rapidly losing its credibility with the public):
"Climate change involves complicated science and generates vigorous debate. Many are concerned about the effect of climate change on our environment. Many are concerned about the effect of climate change policies on our economy. "
Not a word about...
04/15/08 11:26 PM
Imagine how different things would be for all of us if all we had to do to file our taxes was fill out a simple, one-page return as part of a flat tax system? No spending hours tracking down all those receipts and other documents to insure that you get all of the deductions you are entitled to, replacing lost forms, going blind trying to read those endless, confusing IRS explanations of how to compute this and calculate that, sorting through a computer software program to prepare your return, etc. etc. etc.
We won't be freed of those burdens until Congress gets withit and abolishes the present monster of a tax system and replaces it with the justice and simplicity of a flat tax that treats every taxpayer equally. For now, we're stuck with the monster.
The National Taxpayer's Union released its latest study of the cost and complexity of the tax system and the study provides page after page of documentation of how abusive and costly the system is, making you marvel that taxpayers continue to put up with this absurdity.
NTU's Andrew Moylan notes these "lowlights" detailed in the study:
- Individual taxpayers will spend about 3.55 billion hours complying with income tax laws this year -- up from 3.18 billion hours last year. The value of this time is worth $92.6 billion.
- They'll also spend a lot of money this year: an estimated $27.7...
04/04/08 3:01 PM
Drudge is linking to a news story in The Los Angeles Times on a new advertising campaign for Swedish Abolut vodka sales in Mexico. As you can see above, the campaign is focused by a map of Mexico drawn as if the lands from which became the states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California were never ceded to the United States.
I wonder how Swedes would feel if Budweiser began an advertising campaign in which Sweden, Denmark and Norway are all incorporated into the German state? Vodka never "did anything" for me (and, in any case, I haven't had a drink of any alcohol in more than 17 years), so I have no idea where Absolut ranks among the world's vodka brands.
But if I were an American vodka drinker, I'd be thinking seriously of removing Absolut from my list of acceptable vodka...
04/04/08 2:48 PM
Suitably Flip has the goods on U.S. Mainstream Media outlets echoing an unusually blatantly biased report earlier this week in The Independent in Great Britain that said the recent increase of Food Stamp use to record levels is indicative of a U.S. economy in depression.
04/04/08 9:26 AM
Sen. Hillary Clinton has recently adopted the phrase "insourcing" to describe her pallet of anti-job creation and economic growth proposals, but BizCentral.org's Todd Malan has the backstory on the origins of that particular sobriquet.
By the way, if you aren't checking BizCentral.org regularly, you should be, as it brings together a dozen or so of the top minds from across the field of business-related associations that follow policy debates and developments in Washington.
BizCentral.org is the brainchild of Pat Cleary, the former National Association of Manufacturers communications guru who is now toiling away at the Washington office of Fleishman-Hillard Digital, the online branch of the storied public relations firm. Yes, he's gone over to the dark side, but don't hold that against Patrick, as I know him to be a good...
04/04/08 9:10 AM
A total of 46 Members of Congress (MOCs), including 39 representatives and seven senators, have signed the Club for Growth's pledge to swear off earmarks for good. Andy Roth, Club for Growth's congressional strategist extraordinaire has the latest compilation here and some good advice - let your MOC who is on this list know you know and appreciate their action. And if your MOCs aren't on the list, Andy tells you how to tell them it's time for them to get with the program.
Porkbusters
Earmarks
Federal...
03/28/08 6:06 PM
It shouldn't surprise or sadden me anymore toread about a once-noble university now acting as if the First Amendment was never adopted, but it still does. Remember the Duke lacrosse team outrage? Well, the players and their families are suing all of the responsible parties, including Duke.
I doubt there have been many cases in which a damages suit was more justified than this one. Frankly, there would be such sweet justice if the three young men whose lives were shattered by false rape charges end up owning Duke University, so they can fire school president Richard Brodhead and the faculty members who aided and abetted the students' defamation.
In response to the litigation that has been initiated, Duke's lawyers are trying to get the judge to issue an order directing the plaintiffs to shut down the web site they have established keep the media, the public and their legions of supporters informed on the status of the case. Seems the school finds the posting of briefs filed in the case to be "incendiary." Interesting, isn't it, how tyrants and cowards always find the truth to be threatening.
Powerline's Paul Mirengoff - who knows a good brief when he reads it - has more details and some insights that ought to make the Duke lawyers think twice about what they are doing to themselves and their...
03/28/08 1:14 PM
Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-TX, is introducing legislation that would upgrade to law the FEC's current regulations protecting bloggers from campaign finance provisions that could make a post about a candidate or a link to a candidate's web site a contribution or expenditure. The Blogger Protection Act of 2008 will be introduced when the House of Representatives returns next week.
Hensarling is chairman of the Republican Study Committee (RSC), the leading conservative caucus in the lower chamber. Go here for a post about the upcoming bill and a link to its text. Here's how Hensarling explains the measure in a Dear Colleague letter being circulated now:
"Two years ago, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) issued regulations that protected bloggers from being hampered by certain campaign finance laws. Under these regulations, bloggers cannot be considered to have made a contribution or expenditure on behalf of (or in opposition to) a candidate simply because they link to campaign websites or write about the positions of federal candidates.
"Additionally, blogs are treated as any other publication under the general media exemption from most campaign finance restrictions. Without such protections, bloggers could be subject to various limitations and reporting requirements under campaign finance law.
"But these blogger protections are just regulatory—they...
03/28/08 11:17 AM
Check out The Heritage Foundation's policy blog, The Foundry, and its excellent Morning Bell feature for an update on the games being played by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-CA, and Rep. Edward Markey, D-MA, chairmen, respectively, of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and House Energy Independence and Global Warming Committee.
Boxer and Markey are in high dudgeon accusing the Bush administration of "running out the clock" on issuing carbon emissionsregulations. But, Morning Bell points out, Boxer and Markey have had a whole year to do something on the issue:
"Funny thing about Boxer and Markey berating the EPA for not acting on global warming. Both of these powerful committee chairmen have much more authority to act on global warming than the EPA does. The EPA derives all of its authority from Congress. It is Boxer and Markey who have had more than a year to act on global warming and have chosen not to do so. And why have they not acted? The answer illuminates the hypocrisy at the core of the environmentalist movement."
Go here for the rest of the story at The Foundry.
Politics
Democrats
GOP
Conservatives
Liberals
Congress
EPA
Global Warming/a>
Environmental...
03/26/08 7:32 PM
Ed Feulner and Rebecca Hagelin, my old compatriots at The Heritage Foundation, hosted a wonderful dinner last night to pay tribute to Wes Pruden and Fran Coombs, who are leaving their long-time posts as executive editor and managing editor, respectively, of The Washington Times.
I was immensely honored to be able to join many old Times friends - like Paul Bedard, now the influential "Washington Whispers" guy at U.S. News & World Report who has an insightful post on the dinner here - in raising numerous toasts to Wes and Fran. Their accomplishments as, according to Fran, "the Lennon and McCartney" of the newsroom, are lengthy and impressive to be sure.
But suffice it to say these two proudly old school newsmen led a rebellious bunch of determined journalists in challenging not only The Washington Post for news dominance in the nation's capitol, but in demonstrating for all the nation to see that a great newspaper is still built by getting the important news first and getting it right, doing so without fear or favor to anybody in government or other precincts of public life and, most important, never, ever succumbing to the snobbish notion that the people writing the news are smarter, classier or otherwise better than the people reading the news.
People often tell me they find much the same attitude nowadays in the newsroom of The Washington Examiner....
03/26/08 6:46 PM
Danny Glover, long-time managing editor of National Journal's Tech Daily and creator of the Beltway Blogroll, has moseyed over to Brent Bozell's Media Research Center where he just took the wraps off a great new web site, Eyeblast.tv.
Eyeblast.tv is where you will find all the most timely videos on major issues, candidates and trends. And if you are at all familiar with MRC, you know it has a well-earned reputation for keeping the closest of eyes on the broadcast outlets of the Mainstream Media. So next time some network anchor slips and lets his or her lefty bias hang out too far, you will know Eyeblast.tv will be the first place to look for the video.
Once you get there, you will want to join the fun, which will enable you to post your own contributions to the site's content, offer comments and rating analyses on content that is already there, make new friends of like and perhaps other mind and participate in numerous other ways in an online community that is sure to grow and blossom into something quite significant on the online political media landscape.
How do I know that? Because I know Danny. He understands the old media and the new media, and their respective strengths and weaknesses, from the inside. He's also got a great eye for politically significant media coverage.
He's even a first-rate vidcaster himself, as he demonstrated earlier this week with this fine...
03/21/08 3:28 PM
Examiner contributor Paul Chesser says Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius has vetoed a bill allowing construction of two new coal-fired power plants in the Sunflower State. That's bad news for Kansans who will need electricity in the future.
Even worse news, though, is the fact the governor has signed on the dotted line to turn over environmental policy development in Kansas to the Pennsylvania-based Center for Climate Strategies. Paul has become the nation's pre-iminent expert on the activities of this global warming alarmist operation funded by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and other left-wing funders.
He says the Sandler Family Supporting Foundation, a close ally of George Soros, is helping pay for the CCS work in Kansas:
"Who else has Sandler supported? They were instrumental in joining George Soros to create the Center for American Progress and Democracy Alliance. Gave nice contributions to ACORN, Oceana, and Environmental Defense too. For the first time in watching the maneuvers of CCS, we've discovered a bond not only to the environmental left, but the explicitly political activist left as well."
Paul has written several opeds in The Examiner detailing the activities of CCS in Maryland and the incredible abuses of the Maryland public information law committed by Maryland environmental bureaucrats in their efforts to conceal the full truth about CCS from...
03/21/08 1:41 PM
Andrew Moylan of the National Taxpayers Union has a superb oped in today's edition of The Washington Times entitled "Republicans and pork." Moylan lays out in excruciating detail how in recent months the Republican-controlled White House and GOP minorities in Congress failed to take advantage of golden opportunities to stop the congressional favor factory in its tracks.
Moylan notes, for instance, that "rather than taking bold action to stop earmarks altogether, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican, decided to create the most useless of reform efforts: a task force. He then compounded this error by naming one of the Senate's most notorious porkers as a member of the working group, Republican Sen. Thad Cochran of Mississippi."
Of course, everybody in America knows that when Washington appoints a task force, nothing positive will be accomplished toward solving a problem because such a panel is nothing more than a tactic for appearing to be "doing something" while in fact doing nothing at all.
Don't miss the rest of Moylan's great oped.
Porkbusters
Earmarks
Federal...
03/12/08 6:46 PM
This is a rush transcipt of McCaskill's speech earlier this afternoon in support of the 2009 budget amendment she is co-sponsoring with Sen. Jim DeMint, R-SC, providing a one-year moratorium on all earmarking. I'll get an edited version up in place of the following ASAP.
You can also watch her speech here. DeMint's speech is here.
MCCASKILL
madam president, i'd like to speak a few minutes about the amendment that i have cosponsored with senator demint concerning the earmarking process in congress. you know, it's very unusual that a problem is as bipartisan as this problem. spending public money is something we should take very seriously. it's one of the most important things we do. we all have to remember it's not our money. this spending of public money should be done on merit. it should be done on a
cost-benefit basis. it should be done on getting the most bang for our buck. spending public money should not be based on your political pa party. it should not be based on what state you come from, should not be based on which committee you're assigned to, and it should certainly not be based on how politically vulnerable you might be in the next election. if you look at the numbers in terms of, for example, the minority members of the house of representatives that represent
primarily african-american districts, it is, frankly, hard to explain that they get less in...
03/12/08 3:35 PM
Former Clinton administration lawyer Greg Craig raised eyebrows when he endorsed Sen. Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination over former First Lady and current New York Sen. Hillary Clinton. Now, Craig has written a memo that absolutely devastates Clinton's claim of having the kind of foreign policy experience that prepares her for the presidency from Day One.
Here's the nub of Craig's argument:
"There is no doubt that Hillary Clinton played an important domestic policy role when she was First Lady. It is well known, for example, that she led the failed effort to pass universal health insurance. There is no reason to believe, however, that she was a key player in foreign policy at any time during the Clinton Administration. She did not sit in on National Security Council meetings. She did not have a security clearance. She did not attend meetings in the Situation Room. She did not manage any part of the national security bureaucracy, nor did she have her own national security staff. She did not do any heavy-lifting with foreign governments, whether they were friendly or not. She never managed a foreign policy crisis, and there is no evidence to suggest that she participated in the decision-making that occurred in connection with any such crisis. As far as the record shows, Senator Clinton never answered the phone either to make a decision on...
03/10/08 12:26 PM
That's the arresting title of Human Events editor Jed Babbin's column this morning. Jed sees the struggle between Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination coming down to a brutal, bloody battle between now and the debacle in Denver in August. And that favors Clinton.
"The wonderfully-interminable cage match between Clinton and Obama may make this the most Clintonian of elections: nasty, brutish and long. If Sen. McCain will remain locked on what he calls a 'respectful' campaign, he’d better be cheering for Obama," Babbin contends.
I said months ago that I expected the Democrats to end up with their dream ticket - Clinton/Obama - because it is the ultimate expression of identity politics. The fact there is, in effect, a dead heat in the delegate battle, with neither candidate able to secure sufficient votes to wrap up the nomination before the convention means there will have to be a deal. Obama will take the veep slot or face the prospect of losing the Superdelegates battle and leaving the convention as the last defeated man against Hillary.
But I'm just an humble editorial page editor and blogger, so what do I know? Not as much as Babbin. Go here to read the rest of his excellent column, including the reason for the Mob allusion in the...
03/10/08 7:47 AM
Class warfare rhetoric is being flung about by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, the two senators fighting tooth and nail for the Democratic presidential nomination to oppose Arizona Sen. John McCain, the Republican nominee, who voted against the Bush tax cuts because they supposedly favored the rich.
If these three candidates essentially agree on this "Two Americas" theme, it must be true that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, right? And what about that related claim that is also becoming a fixture of political rhetoric, the idea that the disappearance of the Middle Class is happening because of the growing disparity of wealth and income in American society?
As usual, there is far more to these issues than routinely is reported by the Mainstream Media. In fact, it is no exaggeration to say the poor in America are richer than they've ever been before, which tells us a lot about why millions of poor people in places like Mexico routinely risk life and limb to get to America.
American University professor Brad Schiller has a superb piece in today's edition of The Wall Street Journal that demolishes the rich get richer rhetoric that is accepted gospel throughout the ranks of conventional wisdom in the media and other intellectual circles. He points to the U.S. Census Bureau's annual report on household incomes:
"The annual release of...
03/07/08 11:59 AM
I just read something in today's edition of The Wall Street Journal that has me re-reading it, rubbing my eyes and wondering if I really read the words I just read.
Somebody please tell me if this is the same George McGovern who was the 1972 Democratic presidential nominee.
UPDATE: Ed Morrissey at Hot Air says it is!
And notes that when the Democrats have even gotten too liberal for George McGovern, something really important is going on in American...
03/07/08 10:53 AM
Anybody who wants to understand what is wrong with the national Republican Party need look no further than Kimberley Strassel's superb column in today's edition of The Wall Street Journal. Strassel focuses on the warped priorities of too many GOP members of the Senate.
Their priority is to not to regain a Republican congressional majority or to keep the White House in GOP hands so that the conservative reform vision for American can be implemented, but rather to preserve their ability to hand out our tax dollars to their friends, supporters, campaign donors, relatives and former staff members via earmarks.
England had its "Rotten Boroughs." America has its Rotten Incumbents.
Here are the key graphs:
"The problem is the Senate, where Republicans have left House colleagues to twist in the wind. Mississippi Republican Thad Cochran, ranking member on the Appropriations Committee, brought home more pork than any other member of Congress -- some $837 million.
"The Senate GOP leadership isno better, with former Whip Trent Lott finishing his last year in office with a $311 million haul. Driving this is the old philosophy that bacon is necessary to win elections. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is already running re-election ads in Kentucky boasting about the $200 million he secured for universities, as well as a hefty buyout he secured for his state's tobacco...
03/06/08 7:30 AM
Free Paul Jacobs brings news of a decision by the U.S. Appeals Court for the Sixth District over-turning an Ohio law governing how initiative petition circulators can be paid. In its decision, the court observed that “the State largely misses the point that free speech can be costly. By making speech more costly, the State is virtually guaranteeing that there will be less of it.”
Are you listening Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmundson? FPJ also brings news of a new campaign finance controversy involving Democrat Edmundson. Predictably, it doesn't appear that Democrat Gov. Brad Henry intends to do anything about...
03/04/08 6:40 PM
Leave it to a local media outlet to do the story the national papers like The New York Times and The Washington Post should have already done. Knoxnews.com reports on the significant impact on a Citgo store owner of the boycott by area drivers.
If it's happening in Tennessee, odds are good it's happening in a lot of other places, too. Maybe you should ask your local newspaper editor when he or she is going to do the story.
HT:...
02/28/08 6:27 PM
Historian Victor Davis Hanson is a strong contender for the title of successor to Paul Johnson as the epoch's most illuminating interpreter of the present and future in terms of the past. He recently sat down for an interview with a Swiss newspaper and answered a series of frank questions with a stunning level of candor.
You should read the entire interview, withich VDH has posted on his web site here. As further inducement to your clicking over, here are some samples of his responses:
On the differences in approach to immigration issues between the U.S. and Europe:
JF: Do you see any appreciable differences between the way the U.S. is dealing with immigration issues, and Europe’s response to similar problems?
VDH: We will stop the influx soon and through our powers of assimilation and popular culture absorb those here; you may well not and thus are already seeing a tiny elite on top mouthing utopian leftwing bromides while a radical rightwing movement on bottom will grow, demanding xenophobic solutions.
I am not confident in an easy solution for Europe, given its 20th-century past — whether confronting the specter of a Muslim Eurabia, or the counter-rightwing backlash that could get very ugly. You in Europe have little facility — socially, culturally, and politically — to absorb immigrants into full-fledged Europeans. We do (as Europe’s...
02/28/08 12:30 PM
Two stories out today provide additional evidence of why Congress has fallen just about as far as it can in public esteem. Instead of considering and passing laws to advance the common good, the congressional process looks increasingly like a rackets game in which incumbents and their key staffers demand payment of protection money in the form of campaign contributions, lucrative jobs and other forms of self-interested emolument.
First comes this item from Roll Call, courtesy of Talking Points Memo's Muckraker Paul Kiel: Seems that some unnamed GOP Hill aides are frustrated that the telecommunications companies aren't sending in their protection payments - campaign donations - in return for the GOPers hard work to make sure the FISA bill grants the firm's retroactive immunity from class action lawsuits.
Kiel includes this key passage from the Roll Call report:
“'It’s quite discouraging,' said one GOP leadership aide, referring to the disparity in giving from the telecommunications industry in light of the FISA debate, but also the broader lack of support for Republicans from the business community in general.
“'These companies just won’t do anything,' the aide said. 'Even when you have the Democrats working against their bottom line.'...
"[A Republican lobbyist said] 'There’s no question that from time to time staff, and maybe some...
02/28/08 9:12 AM
Over at RedState.com this morning, Rob Bluey of The Heritage Foundation has a post up describing the attacks on Rep. John Campbell, R-CA, for his brief sponsorship of a bill that provided for a desalinization project in his home district.
The earmarkers are accusing Campbell - a vigorous opponent of earmarking - of hypocrisy. Bluey explains:
"There is some dispute as to whether Campbell's bill amounted to the definition of an 'earmark' because it was a stand-alone bill, which followed the normal legislative process. But because it would have authorized the expenditure of $2.5 million for a desalination project in his district, it was close enough to prompt Campbell to withdraw it from consideration.
"Campbell's decision to pull the bill came on the same day, Feb. 12, he visited the Heritage Foundation, where he attacked Republican earmarks and criticized Republicans for not going far enough in their pursuit of reform. The smear campaign against Campbell dates back to at least to that day. I know because I received an e-mail tip from a Republican Hill staffer who prodded me to question Campbell about the desalination project; I didn't take the bait.
"Feeling unsatisfied two weeks later, someone in the GOP ranks leaked the information to The Hill, which reported the story Wednesday night."
Frankly, I am surprised there hasn't been more of this kind of...
02/27/08 1:56 PM
As soon as the news of William F. Buckley Jr.'s passing came this morning, my thoughts went back to my undergraduate days at Oklahoma State University in the late 1960s and early 1970s. I had been an energetic conservative activist with Young Americans for Freedom and Teen Age Republicans since high school and among the very first serious books I read as an adolescent was his "God and Man at Yale." That was followed by "Did you ever see a dream walking," which was Buckley's compilation of and commentary upon scholarly essays by other conservatives on a variety of the major issues of the day.
To say Buckley had a profound effect upon me and millions of my contemporaries does not begin to do the man justice. I thought of my days at OSU because there was only one newsstand in town that stocked National Review and I couldn't wait for each new issue to arrive. Even at a land grant state school like OSU, the liberal orthodoxy in the classroom was suffocating, so every NR issue was like a gulp of fresh air. Buckley was a lifeline to a world of ideas and thought whose depth and richness scaled the heart of the Western intellectual tradition.
I loved the magazine's rebellious, irreverent attitude, the wit and grace of its composition and the wonderfully expansive learning and wisdom epitomized by so many of the bylines it offered, particularly those of Frank Meyer...
02/26/08 6:15 PM
Democracy Project's Bruce Kesler, whose byline appears with some regularity in the editorial commentary pages of The Washington Examiner, has an important post up today that shoots down another of the many Left Lies about the Vietnam War and the John Kerry presidential campaign in 2004.
The Left Lie is that Swift Boater John O'Neill was recruited by Charles Colson when he was in the Nixon White House to form an organization - Vietnam Veterans for a Just Peace - to counter Kerry's Vietnam Veterans Against the War. The truth is O'Neill didn't start VVJP, Bruce Kesler did.
Go here for the rest of the story. I wonder what Joe Klein, who is now a Time Magazine columnist, has to say about Colson's denial?
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02/26/08 5:48 PM
Regular readers of this space will recognize Danny Glover as the talented former managing editor of National Journal's Technology Daily and the guy behind the superlative Beltway Blogroll. Danny is in new job digs now as executive producer of EyeBlastTV from the Media Research Center.
Danny's first effort at a mash-up is a good one, a collage of the many moods of Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail. Check it out here. The closer with Tim Russert of Meet the Press points to one of the most amazing developments of the 2008 presidential race - Hillary Clinton has managed to alienate legions of Mainstream Media journalists who were otherwise predisposed in her favor.
Someday, the 08 Clinton communications plan will be studied as how NOT to run a presidential campaign's media outreach. For an insight into how this has come about, check out Dana Milbank's excellent piece on Washingtonpost.com. Yes, that other Washington daily's web site! :-) And yes, I read the third Washington daily's web site every day, too! And so should...
02/26/08 11:53 AM
Rep. John Murtha is one of the all-time champion porkers in Congress and he's even hosting a swanky dinner tomorrow night for defense lobbyists who have or who hope to get millions of tax dollars from earmarks sponsored by the Pennsylvania Democrat.
But Murtha and his pork barreling revelers won't be alone because three Porkbuster groups are planning to crash the gathering. The groups include the National Taxpayers Union, Americans for Prosperity and Citizens Against Government Waste.
Here's the release text on The Murtha Bash - Pork Crash:
Taxpayer Watchdog Groups Come Together to Rally Against Congressman Murtha’s Swanky Fundraiser with Pork-Seeking Defense Contractors
WASHINGTON - Three major national taxpayer watchdog groups are banding together to hold a rally outside U.S. Rep. John Murtha’s swanky fundraising dinner with pork-barrel-seeking defense lobbyists on Wednesday evening. Taxpayers plan to gather outside the upscale Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Pentagon City, Virginia, to display their displeasure with Representative Murtha “Puttin’ on the Ritz.”
Every year Congressman Murtha hosts what has been described as a fancy “payback dinner” for defense contractors who contribute to his campaign. Roll Call reported on February 11 that “(e)very private entity that received a special project from the Pennsylvania Democrat...
02/26/08 9:57 AM
Former Washington Examiner intern Thomas Cheplick of San Francisco has an excellent column up today over at The American Spectator advocating Alaska's Gov. Sarah Palin as Sen. John McCain's running-mate. I have to confess I know next to nothing about Palin, but Thomas makes a very interesting case.
Cheplick argues that the young, conservative and attractive Palin would be an ideal running-mate for the old coot from Arizona. Frankly, I think running as the old coot might be a brilliant campaign theme, but that's an issue for another day. Here's Thomas's key graphs:
"Sarah Palin, the beautiful conservative Republican governor of Alaska, would be an ideal choice to help McCain slay this unholy ObamaOprah beast which is set to rake in nearly $50 million a month in campaign donations alone, and has intense auxiliary support coming from the unions, George Soros's billions-infused Democracy Alliance organization, and other rich Democratic networks.
"Mrs. Palin is one of conservatism's own, and would be the first female vice president. She's young being only 44 (two years behind Senator Obama), she is wildly known to despise government corruption. She defeated a horribly entrenched and corrupt Republican political machine in Alaska. She has a son in the U.S. military. She's strongly pro-life, belonging, in fact, to Feminists for Life."
You can learn more about Palin...
02/24/08 4:51 PM
Readers of the "Warning Signs Missed: ILEP" series that appeared recently in The Examiner will recall that none of the officials connected with the Institute for Law and Economy Policy tax-exempt foundation responded to my repeated requests for comment.
Now Sandra Stein, the long-time ILEP executive vice president and former Milberg Weiss staff attorney responds to a Friday posting about the Examiner series by Walter Olson at Point of Law blog. Stein's response is to dismiss the Examiner series as full of "falsehoods" because the evidence was wrongly interpreted? Key facts were ignored? People were misquoted?
No, according to Stein, the Examiner series was based on falsehoods because Phil Anschutz, the guy who owns the newspaper, was once sued by Stein's former employer:
"Please be advised the Washington Examiner has a pro-business, anti-shareholder/investor reputation. The owner of this paper is Philip Anschutz, a billionaire, who also owns Qwest Communications. Philip Anschutz recently settled a shareholder class action suit against Qwest for $400 million, which was filed by the real targets of this smear campaign, Milberg Weiss and Bill Lerach. This smear campaign by the Washington Examiner is based on falsehoods and is motivated by retribution and revenge."
I believe that fully qualifies as an illustration of the fallacy of ad homenum...
02/23/08 11:02 AM
There was a time when the sight of Mike Wallace and a "60 Minutes" camera crew coming through the door meant somebody was going to have a very bad day, and the odds were good they deserved it. But those days are long gone, replaced by such scurrilous eruptions of cheap-shot left-wing agenda "journalism" as the Dan Rather-Mary Mapes Bush National Guard smear based on forged documents shortly before the 2004 presidential election.
Now along comes another "60 Minutes" smear special, this time featuring Scott Pelley peddling accusations from one Dana Jill Simpson, a discredited Alabama attorney who claims among much else that former White House political maestro Karl Rove asked her to take compromising photographs of Donald Seligman - the most successful Democrat in that state's modern history - in flagrante with an aide.
Democrat Seligman is the only man ever to occupy all four of Alabama's top four statewide positions and he did it after the Deep South state had gone firmly over to the Republican camp. But a few years ago, he was convicted of federal bribery and conspiracy charges. Naturally, some elements of the Left have since sought to portray Seligman's prosecution as part of a Republican conspiracy to frame him. This latest "60 Minutes" smear is part of that effort.
But, as Quin Hillyer, associate editorial page editor of The...
02/21/08 7:50 PM
Members of Congress took dramatically fewer trips financed by private interests in 2007, compared to previous years, but new data posted by LegiStorm shows clearly that Democrats took far more such journeys than Republicans.
The most traveled Member of Congress ibetween 2000 and 2007 was Rep. Barney Frank, D-MA, who jetted off on 86 trips, followed closely Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, D-OH, with 83 and Rep. Maxine Walters, D-CA, with 74. In fact, 19 of the 20 most traveled Members were Democrats. The only exception was Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-CN, who was 20th with 46 trips.
The first GOPer to appear in the rankings is Sen. Norm Coleman, R-MN, who also took 46 trips paid for by private interests. Here's the complete list of the top 20 for 2000-2007, as compiled by LegiStorm:
Member Number of Trips 2000-2007
Barney Frank, D-MA 86
Stephanie Tubbs Jones, D-OH 83
Maxine Walters, D-CA 74
Harold Ford, D-TN 71
James Clyburn, D-SC 70
Joe Biden, D-DE 65
Jim McDermott, D-WA 60
John Breaux, D-LA...
02/20/08 7:54 AM
From the I'm-Not-Making-This-Up Department comes this about a bill in Congress to strip $2 million worth of earmarks from the City of Berkeley in response to its ban on recruiting by the U.S. Marines:
"The most egregious is $243,000 for the organization Chez Panisse to create gourmet organic school lunches in the Berkeley School District. Chez Panisse is dedicated to 'environmental harmony' and their menu features 'Comt cheese souffl with mche salad,' 'Meyer lemon clairs with huckleberry coulis;' and 'Chicory salad with creamy anchovy vinaigrette and olive toast.'"
Real rib-stickin' stuff for healthy, growing little lefties, courtesy of your tax dollars! If you would like to know more about this, go to Green Eyeshade, the blog of Rep. John Campbell, R-CA, who is the guy behind the legislation stripping the earmarks.
John McCain's views on earmarks are well-known - Cue the clenched fists, grinding teeth and speech beginning "My friends, we've got to stop over-spending ...." But I wonder what Hillary and Obama think about taxpayers buying gourmet food for the children of the Berkeley...
02/17/08 2:53 PM
In a massive 6,700+ word expose, Jeffrey Birnbaum of The Washington Post reveals how the tourism industry, led by corporate giants like Disney and Marriott, has systematically planned and is now executing a classic sleight-of-hand deception of Congress and the American people.
It's all in "the ask," persuading Congress to spend $200 million of the taxpayers' hard-earned money on overseas advertising designed to increase foreign tourists coming here and spending money that ultimately means an estimated $8 billion in profit for ....corporate giants like Disney and Marriott.
Birnbaum's work is masterful and well-deserving of being read closely, but all of the major elements were previously reported by Bruce Kesler of Project-Democracy. That makes his take today on Birnbaum's piece especially interesting. He also has links to his previous posts on the issue and to his Examiner oped on the issue from last...
02/15/08 10:15 AM
Just when you think they really, finally do get it, the House GOP does something that demonstrates yet again that they haven't yet grasped that talking about earmark reform is not enough, they have to actually do something concrete.
Here's the latest illustration: A GOP slot on the House Appropriations Committee - the inner sanctum of the earmarks culture of corruption in Congress - came open and Rep. Jeff Flake of Arizona made it clear that he wanted the appointment.
Putting Flake - who sponsored dozens of amendments to strike earmarks from bills in 2007 - was the perfect choice precisely because he had outraged so many Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle with his aggressive anti-earmarks efforts.
But others in the House GOP wanted the slot, too, though for radically different reasons. Oklahoma's Rep. Tom Cole, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, loudly proclaimed his belief that putting him on the Appropriations Committee would better enable him to direct pork to help vulnerable GOPers stave off election challenges. That's the same strategy that worked so well for the GOP in 2006.
Then there was Alabama's Jo Bonner, a low profile kind of guy who used to be chief of staff for Rep. Sonny Callahan, a colorful pro-military Member of Congress who was a master manipulator of the earmark process for political advantage.
Bonner talks about...
02/14/08 3:40 AM
These great billboards are the creation of a new web-based campaign created by Drew Emmer of the Minnesota Majority. Check it out here at...
02/12/08 8:05 PM
House Minority Leader John Boehner announced today that a new web site focused solely on the House GOP efforts to force House Democrats to accept a moratorium on earmarks and establish a joint commission to study permanent earmark reforms.
Here's the text of Boehner's release:
"House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) today announced a new, dedicated resource in the House Republicans’ ongoing fight to change the way Washington spends taxpayer dollars. House Republicans have launched a website focused solely on earmark reform, serving as a hub for news and information regarding House GOP efforts to hold the Majority to its promises to fundamentally overhaul the taxpayer-funded earmark system. The website can be found at http://earmarkreform.house.gov and includes a web video from Boehner introducing this first-of-its-kind resource.
"'The earmarking process in Congress has become a symbol of a broken Washington,' said Boehner. 'While families struggle with rising costs of living, politicians are wasting their money on pork-barrel projects we don’t need. This website will keep tabs on the Majority, which refuses to join House Republicans in supporting an earmark moratorium, and will chronicle our efforts to begin changing the way Washington spends taxpayers’ money.'
"The House Republicans’ earmark reform website will feature...
02/12/08 9:26 AM
General Motors is announcing today that its 2007 loss is $38.7 billion, the biggest-ever by an automotive company. Much of the loss is attributable to writing off unused tax credits for the third quarter. Technically, that is no doubt true, but that is like saying the biggest problem with floods is that the water is wet.
Also today, John Podhoretz has a superb piece in Commentary on the sad state of affairs in the Republican party. Podhoretz succinctly summarizes the litany of woes that afflict the party, including the tumbling turnout numbers, the inability of the presidential candidates of the "party of the rich" to come even close to the fund raising prowess displayed in 2008 by Democrats, the lengthening list of congressional GOPers throwing in the towel and retiring, and so on and so and so on.
But Podhoretz dismisses the contention that GOP ills are a result of depressed/outraged voters staying home as a result of the earmarks or other ethics scandals of 2006. Instead, he posits that the primary cause of the party's woeful state is the continuing fall-out from President Bush's near-death experience with a failed strategy for Iraq during the 18 months prior to the 2006 election.
So what does this have to do with GM? Allow me to explain. There was a time - the 1950s and 60s - when GM had a lock on the American automotive market, routinely making as much as 60...
02/12/08 8:14 AM
Regular readers of this space know that Ed Morrissey of Captain's Quarters is often linked to here. This is because I long ago concluded that Ed is among the most prescient and intelligent commentators on the right side of the Blogosphere. He also happens to be one of the most genuine and down-to-earth people I know.
But Ed lives in the icebox state of Minnesota, which I don't often visit and he doesn't get over this way to the nation's capitol much, either. So when Ed came to town for CPAC last week, I had to head over to the Blogger Row to say hello.
I caught the Captain at a slow moment Saturday morning, so being desperate to fill some air time, he slapped a headphone on me, told me to sit down and try to say something reasonably intelligent while he fired questions at me.
Most of the questions focus on the state of the newspaper business and whether it has a future anybody presently involved in the industry would care to experience. My answer, by the way, is that it does and I am optimistic about the prospects for traditional journalists in the online news world. You can hear the interview here.
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02/11/08 1:16 PM
Human Events editor Jed Babbin has a super column up this morning in which he lauds Rep. Mike Pence for delivering the best speech of the 2008 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) and notes that the charismatic Indiana congressman offered an excellent suggestion to Sen. John McCain.
Put most succinctly, Pence's suggestion to the prospective Republican presidential candidate was this: OK, you say you are a conservative, one of us, so how about using the months ahead between now and the GOP convention in August to prove it?
The strikes me as an imminently reasonable suggestion because, as Babbin put it:
"McCain’s advantage is that he is a sitting senator. For starters, he could introduce legislation to show he means what he says in 'securing the borders first.' Sens. John Cornyn, R-TX, Jeff Sessions, R-AL and Jim DeMint, R-SC, were among his most determined opponents in last summer’s Bush-McCain-Kennedy disaster. If he can work with them and agree on a 'borders first' bill, he could defuse a huge amount of conservative dissent.
"He could do the same on the Bush tax cut permanence and go farther, eliminating the Alternative Minimum Tax. And while he does this, he could name a committee of advisors to help select a conservative running mate, publishing the committee’s charter to prove that his direction to them is to find not only a...
02/11/08 8:26 AM
That's one of the supposed clinching arguments for why conservatives absolutely must close ranks behind Sen. John McCain as the Republican presidential nominees against either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. Six of the sitting justices are 68 years or older and, with a narrow 5-4 conservative majority, it is critical that the next president appoint conservatives, which McCain promises to do.
It's a persuasive argument, but it doesn't tell the whole story about the Supreme Court. In a post that should generate widespread and serious debate among conservatives who are honestly conflicted about the presidential race, Ragnar Danneskjold of The Jawa Report subjects the "save the Supreme Court for conservatives" case to a much-needed critical analysis. Read and consider it...
02/09/08 8:03 AM
George Will delivered a powerful argument at last night's CPAC banquet on behalf of conservatives sucking it up and being "happy warriors" on behalf of John McCain and the Republican presidential ticket. I listened and for the most part found myself nodding, reluctantly, in agreement.
But I noted that Will did not talk about the one issue on which the Washington Post columnist might be expected to be most concerned: Would President McCain be as aggressive an advocate of campaign finance reform regulation as Senator McCain was? There are four things to consider on this issue.
First, it is almost certainly safe to assume that he would appoint Republican and Democrat FEC commissioners who are solidly in favor of aggressive enforcement of McCain-Feingold. Second, that raises the question of whether a newly invigorated FEC would resume its previously stalled campaign to go after bloggers and limit what they can say about a candidate during a campaign without it being declared a campaign contribution.
Third, would he nominate Supreme Court justices knowing they are likely to move the high court towards declaring the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 unconstitutional?
Finally, would he work with Democratic senators on behalf of any other of their marquee issues, as he did on McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform and McCain-Kennedy immigration reform?
I don't...
02/08/08 7:52 AM
Sen. Tom Coburn, R-OK, introduced Sen. John McCain, R-AZ, yesterday for the latter's speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference in the nation's capitol. In the course of his remarks, Coburn provided a powerful rationale for conservatives to get behind McCain.
Usually the guy delivering the main speech has the most important remarks, but, given McCain's problems in attracting enthusiasm among conservatives, in this case, Coburn's introduction may well have been the more significant of the two addresses.
As I suggested earlier this week, "McCain-Coburn" has a very nice ring to it!
Here is the Coburn text as prepared for delivery:
"I’m honored by the invitation to be here today. I want to thank each of you for your devotion to our country, and for the sacrifices you have made to participate in this event.
"I have the privilege today to say a few words about John McCain, a man of rare courage and character, who I believe is uniquely equipped to lead our nation through the difficult challenges ahead.
"As conservatives, I know that most of us are sick and tired of politicians who tell us what we want to hear then govern in the opposite way. We won’t have that problem with John McCain. He may not always tell us what we want to hear, but he will say what he means and do what he says.
"John McCain has the unique blend of...
02/06/08 9:50 AM
Numbers don't lie and on the morning after Super Tuesday it's clear the numbers for the GOP presidential nomination add up one way - barring something completely unforeseen, Sen. John McCain is headed to the top of the ticket for 2008.
Here's the reality: Mitt Romney can't win the Republican nomination with the level of conservative support he now has, but John McCain can't win the White House with the level of conservative support he doesn't have now.
So the biggest decision facing McCain today is what is he willing to do to win the support of the millions of GOP conservatives without whose support he cannot hope to win in November?
Put another way, the question is not whether conservatives can find a way to reconcile themselves to vote for McCain. That's just another way of saying the same tired old cliche that conservatives have no place to go. They do if they choose to and how they choose will be determined now by McCain.
McCain has the perfect opportunity to begin this serious dialogue at the Conservative Political Action Committee that starts tomorrow in Washington, D.C. If ever there was divine timing, this is it. McCain will seize upon his time at the CPAC podium to invite conservatives to sit down and pow-wow and he must make it clear that he is the guy who needs them more than they need him.
Here's my initial suggestions for what conservatives should expect from...
02/03/08 8:21 PM
Is there just no way for a liberty loving conservative to rationalize voting for John McCain if he wins the Republican presidential nomination? Before answering that question, go to Daily Pundit and read Bill Quick's masterful and comprehensive compilation of the many reasons why the answer to that question is likely to be no for those not lost in partisan...
02/02/08 1:15 PM
McCain and Romney got all the coverage from the Florida primary but did you know Florida voters also overwhelmingly voted in favor of a ballot proposition - Florida Amendment One - that makes significant changes in the state's property taxes, changes meant to favor home owners and small businesses?
Florida Amendment One passed with 64 percent of the vote. There will be many more ballot initiatives, some placed on the November ballot by state legislatures, but most put up for voters to decide via initiative and referendum drives. These propositions typically cover just about every issue imaginable and often represent the only tool available for tax payers to fight assaults from advocates of more government regulation and higher taxes.
Ballotpedia is the new Internet site for keeping abreast of all initiative and referendum activity across the country. It's a wiki, like wikipedia, but focused specifically on everything connected with "citizen initiatives, ballot access, petition drives, initiative and referendum for political change, and associated subjects."
Presidential primaries are not the only thing on the ballot for Super Tuesday. Check out Ballotpedia's extensive information on California's Tribal Gaming proposition here and here for info on California's Proposition 93, which would effectively gut the state's precedent-setting term limits law.
This is an...
02/02/08 12:23 PM
Maybe there's something in the water at the White House that makes people do dumb things when the Freedom of Information Act is the focus of decision-making. It appears the administration didn't read all of the OPEN Government of 2007 after Congress passed it and President Bush signed it.
Otherwise, why is the administration apparently trying to include funding for new Office of Government Information Services (OGIS) established by the OPEN law at the Justice Department' s Office of Information and Privacy, instead of at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).
What's wrong with that? Well, the OPEN government law specified NARA, not DOJ. Why would the White House prefer to have the office at DOJ? Good question. Sen. John Cornyn, R-TX, and Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-VT, the original co-sponsors of OPEN, have asked the White House for an explanation. An OMB spokesman says the final Bush budget proposal has not yet been completed.
More to come on this issue, no doubt.
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02/01/08 8:43 AM
If there is any justice in the world, Sen. John McCain's hopes of winning the 2008 Republican presidential nomination will suffer a body blow when people are reminded of a well-sourced story published last year by The Hill describing in detail how the Arizona "maverick" seriously discussed switching parties with Democratic leaders like Tom Daschle in 2001.
McCain was evidently still angry - is he ever not angry over something? - about losing the 2000 race to President Bush and apparently was attracted to the idea of gaining revenge by picking up his marbles and taking them to the other party, as Jim Jeffords did. The Jeffords move gave Daschle and the Democrats majority control of the Senate, just as McCain would have done had he followed through on his discussions before Jeffords switched.
Daschle talked at length with The Hill about his negotiations with McCain over the possible switch:
"Daschle noted that McCain at that time was frustrated with the Bush administration as a result of his loss to George W. Bush in the 2000 Republican primary.
"Daschle said that throughout April and May of 2001, he and McCain 'had meetings and conversations on the floor and in his office, I think in mine as well, about how we would do it, what the conditions would be. We talked about committees and his seniority … [A lot of issues] were on the...
01/30/08 8:26 PM
EPA official says horsepower monsters like Chevy's Corvette ZR1, above, should be banned.
I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry when I read this comment from Marge Oge, who is director of EPA's office of transportation and air quality:
“We must bring about an end to the horsepower arms race among auto makers and replace it with another different kind of a race, a race to produce the most affordable and desirable, low carbon-vehicle each year.”
She was addressing the Automotive News World Congress, an annual gathering of industry leaders hosted by the widely read trade publication.
It may be possible to be more out-of-touch but I doubt it. Every automaker in the world is racing to design, develop and market every kind of "green vehicle" their engineers can think of because there has clearly been a shift in public opinion in favor of such vehicles - as long as they provide equivalent levels of utility and convenience at affordable prices.
The sales success of hybrid gas/electrics like the Toyota Prius happened not because of a government mandate but because consumers - finally - decided they were ready to buy such a vehicle. They clearly weren't ready a decade ago when GM did everything except jump through hoops to get Californians to drive the all-electric EV1. And let's not forget Honda's failure with its first hybrid, the Insight, and its...
01/30/08 9:25 AM
Joshua Trevino says yes and he makes a strong case for the proposition that former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is becoming THE conservative choice. Not sure I quite agree but it's definitely an interesting take on an otherwise dispiriting outcome.
PREDICTION: McCain is now established as the clear front runner and that means he will soon experience a depth of analysis and critique from the mainstream media and the Right side of the Blogosphere that he has never before had to endure.
Two things will follow: First, the more typical Republican voters know about McCain's views, the less likely they will be to vote for him, and, second, as this process become more evident, McCain's legendary temper will manifest itself in ways that are extremely damaging to him.
Result? It is quite conceivable that McCain will self-destruct and Romney will win the GOP presidential nomination.
UPDATE: Riehl endorses Romney, Obama (Yes, I said Obama)
Blogger Dan Riehl is an analyst of great perception and wit. He posted a lengthy explanation this morning of why he is now making public his endorsement of Mitt Romney, his assessment of the fatal flaws that doom John McCain and his conviction that, should McCain be the GOP nominee and Barack Obama his opponent, electing the latter might well be the best outcome, long-term.
Riehl's fundamental objection to McCain is akin to his problem with...
01/30/08 9:12 AM
No, not Tapscott's Copy Desk, at least not now, but Danny Glover 's superb Beltway Blogroll at National Journal. Danny is leaving his position as managing editor of NJ's Tech Daily.
His farewell post at Beltway Blogroll, which he started several years ago as a way of chronicling the growing influence of blogs in the nation's capitol, is well worth reading, both because he provides a handy summary of the rise of blog influence in the daily life of Washington politics and policy, and because Danny is among the most creative and prolific bloggers anywhere.
For example, besides Beltway Blogroll, Danny is also the mastermind of AirCongress, which is a valuable resource on congressional media, Taxation with Representation, which focuses on the magnitude of taxation in America, and U.S. Presidential Homes. By the way, the latter is the fruit of his family touring the various presidential homes around the country and writing about them on the blog.
And don't be surprised if Danny shows up with more blogs, as he notes in his farewell that:
"I've already bought an Internet address for one, and ever since former President Bill Clinton was impeached in 1998, I've owned his legacy -- the domain names clintonlegacy.com and clintonlegacy.net. Those could come in handy in the blogosphere if his wife, Hillary, is elected president later this year.
"All of which is to say that...
01/30/08 8:42 AM
Opposition appears to be growing to Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmundson's re-indictment of national term limits leader and citizens initiative advocate Paul Jacob and two associates for allegedly violating a controversial Sooner state law requiring initiative petition circulators to be local residents.
Free Paul Jacobs reports on a recent rally by local supporters of Jacob that generated a fair amount of positive media coverage and provided Paul and co-defendants Susan Johnson, president of National Voter Outreach, a firm that manages petition drives, and Rick Carpenter, the chief backer of the 2005 petition drive to give Oklahomans an opportunity to vote on a measure establishing a cap on state government spending.
Go here for the full details.
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01/29/08 7:22 PM
If the Republican wing of the Party of Government in Congress goes along with the State of the Union proposals of President Bush, they will be approving the biggest spending increases ever proposed by the Chief Executive in his seven annual addresses.
How do we know this? Because the green-eye shade types at the National Taxpayers Union took a look at the quantifiable costs of the new Bush proposals and found that:
"President Bush outlined items whose enactment would increase federal spending by a net of $134.6 billion per year - about 10 times higher than what he called for in 2004, 2005, or 2007. This makes his 2008 spending agenda the largest in his Presidency. Bush's lowest total, in 2006, was a scant $91 million.
"The highest overall level NTUF ever reported for this nine-year project was in Bill Clinton's 1999 speech ($305 billion). Of the 23 items with a possibly quantifiable budget impact that NTUF identified in Bush's speech, 12 would increase federal spending while three would reduce outlays. The remaining eight items, which mentioned policy initiatives with a currently unpredictable cost, could have sizeable budget impacts (such as increased use of renewable energy and nuclear power).
"The single largest spending hike Bush offered last night was in connection with "fully funding our troops" - at $109.4 billion. Bush's HIV/AIDs initiative...
01/29/08 3:42 PM
Andy Roth at Club for Growth is keeping a running tally on Members of Congress who take the pledge - swear not to seek any earmarks. Here are the 10 members of the House who have either never sought an earmark since entering Congress or have taken the pledge not to do so in the future.
Jeff Flake, R-AZ
John Campbell, R- CA
Jeb Hensarling, R-TX
John Shadegg, R-AZ
John Boehner, (OH-08)
John Kline, R-MN
Tom Price, R-GA
Lynn Westmoreland, R-GA
Virginia Foxx, R-NC
Trent Franks, R-AZ
Andy cautions that the above may be a partial list and if you know of a member who has taken the vow who is not listed here, let Andy know here.
I think the Senate list would include only Coburn of Oklahoma, DeMint of South Carolina, McCain of Arizona and Cornyn of Texas but I've probably missed somebody, too.
Hensarling is chairman of the Republican Study Committee and issued a statement last night challenging all senior GOP members in the leadership and on committees to swear off the earmark addiction:
“Republicans must go further. There is no greater way to lead than by example. Within the last three months, we have seen rapid growth in the number of Members who have taken a personal earmark moratorium. To that end, I hope that senior Members of our Republican Conference – our appropriators, CommitteeRanking Members, and especially Members of our Republican Leadership team –...
01/28/08 11:23 PM
Glenn Reynolds puts the intense reaction among folks on the right side of the Blogosphere into a bit of perspective by noting of President Bush's remarks in tonight's State of the Union address on earmarks:
"OKAY, I HAVE TO GLOAT JUST A BIT: Bush led off with earmarks. His actions aren't as bold as I'd like, but still -- back in 2005 when PorkBusters started, nobody in Washington cared and members of Congress were bragging about pork. Now the State of the Union leads of with an attack on earmarks, to thundering applause. Yeah, a lot of it's a sham. But hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue, and this kind of hypocrisy indicates that the anti-earmark momentum is growing."
There's more here at Instapundit.
UPDATE: DeMint on YouTube with response to SOTU
South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint takes a new approach to providing a conservative perspective from Congress on the Bush SOTU by presenting it on YouTube. Soundtrack is less than ideal and the format is rather rudimentary, but it's a start and hopefully a precedent for conservatives in and out of...
01/28/08 7:48 PM
Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn's response to President Bush's State of the Union address proposal regarding earmarks:
“President Bush’s decision to emphasize earmarks in his State of the Union address is an indictment of Congress and, in particular, his own party. Congress could cut earmarks in half if Republicans in Congress stopped asking for earmarks. The party of limited government and personal responsibility should not have to look to the president to save it from itself. Republicans in Congress should act like Republicans and not force the president to veto pork-laden spending bills,” Dr. Coburn said.
“While President Bush’s criticism of earmarks is helpful, members of Congress do not need an allowance of 5,500 special-interest earmarks– an amount equal to half of last year’s 11,000 earmarks. The best policy is for members of Congress to lead by example and pursue earmark reform by not seeking earmarks. I’m pleased more members are doing just that. Two years ago only a handful of members of Congress did not seek earmarks. Today, more than 20 members of Congress – Republicans and Democrats – have forsaken pork-barrel spending and signed ‘no-pork’ pledges.
“The American people want to see the Washington earmark favor factory shut down, not downsized or placed under new management. How many...
01/28/08 2:44 PM
This staff memo is circulating in the Senate today. For those who don't remember, Thune is the Republican who defeated Tom Daschle:
"Wanted to share the following letter that my boss and Sen. Wyden are circulating today regarding the economic stimulus package and how Targeted transportation infrastructure investment could assist each of our states in addressing transportation infrastructure needs.
"Please feel to contact me if your boss would like to be added to this letter. We’re shooting to send the letter by COB today.
"Thanks,
"Dave Schwietert
Legislative Director
Sen. John Thune
"Please join us in urging the Congressional leadership to include a targeted investment in transportation infrastructure as part of the economic stimulus package.
"Infrastructure spending is one of the best investments the federal government can make in the economy: every dollar spent generates about $5.70 in economic activity, and more than 47, 000jobs are created for every $1 billion provided. Infrastructure investment also carries the additional benefits of reducing traffic congestion, improving the flow of freight, and saving lives through increased safety.
"The effect of this spending would be felt immediately as well. Every state has projects that are ready to go and could begin construction within 90 days, creating much needed jobs and...
01/28/08 2:06 PM
The White House is now confirming that President Bush won't be signing an executive order that could stop the vast majority of earmarks. Instead, he's going to sign one "directing agencies to ignore any future earmarks included in report language but not in the legislation, which is traditionally how they end up on the books," according to White House spokesman Dana Perino.
Bush will also threaten to veto any appropriations bills that don't cut the number of earmarks in half when they come to him during the remainder of his days in the White House.
Confirmation of Bush's decision comes hard on the heels of the House GOP's weekend letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi proposing a six-month moratorium on earmarks and appointment of a joint bipartisan Senate-House committee to study the issue. And last week the Senate GOP Conference Chairman, Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, made clear his intent to cooperate with Democrats rather than confront them.
In view of the collapse of the GOP leadership on all three fronts, it is absolutely fitting that Pelosi most accurately explains what it means: “I think Republicans have pulled their punch on earmarks. It looked like a very lukewarm approach. They want to beat a loud drum, but when it comes down to it, they want their earmarks.”
Precisely. With only a small band of honorable exceptions, Republicans in the...
01/27/08 9:46 PM
There are millions of bloggers, including hundreds who write about politics. But there are an elite few whose opinions and analyses carry significant weight in the Blogosphere. Ed Morrissey of Captain's Quarters is among the elite. For me personally, he is one of four on my "daily first check" list (Glenn Reynolds, Paul Mirengoff and Hugh Hewitt are the other three).
Now, Ed has announced his endorsement of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney for the GOP presidential nomination. In characteristic fashion, Ed explains the logic behind his decision in detail and
in the process points to some of the fundamental facts of the GOP reality in the presidential race. He says in the final analysis, it came down to two of the contenders:
"Over the last two weeks, my focus has come down to Rudy and Romney. Both would make good Presidents. Mitt, however, has shown that he will fight in every state, while Rudy played a bit of rope-a-dope -- and has apparently lost the gamble. Until the debate, I thought Rudy might have had the right idea, but Rudy still hasn't come out of the gate in any effective manner.
"Romney is not a perfect candidate. We don't have any perfect candidates. In fact, I could still support Rudy, McCain, or Mike Huckabee without reservation in a general election against either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton. I think, though, that Romney has the...
01/25/08 11:04 PM
I'm skeptical that it will achieve anything but at least House Minority Leader John Boehner is leading the GOP caucus with some concrete actions that challenge politicians on both sides of the aisle to put up or shut up on earmarks.
Here's the complete letter to Pelosi:
The Honorable Nancy Pelosi
Speaker of the House
H-132, the Capitol
Washington, D.C. 20515
Dear Speaker Pelosi:
The earmark process in Congress has become a symbol of a broken Washington. Wasteful pork-barrel spending has outraged American families and eroded public confidence in our institution. Both of our parties bear responsibility for this failure.
We write tonight to notify you that House Republicans believe that the earmark system should be brought to an immediate halt, and a bipartisan select committee should immediately be established for the purpose of identifying ways to bring fundamental change to the way in which Washington spends taxpayers’ money.
In the spirit of bipartisan cooperation fostered by our recent cooperation on a short-term economic growth package, we offer our hope that you and the members of the House Democratic Caucus will join House Republicans in supporting these steps, which are urgently needed to begin the process of fixing Washington’s broken spending practices and restoring trust between the American people and their elected leaders. We respectfully ask...
01/25/08 6:46 PM
Morrisey is hot, folks. He received a thoughtful email from one of his legion of faithful readers posing the question in the headline above and, being the good man that he is, Morrisey replied at length with some observations that are well-worth reading. Especially this graph:
"The worst part of earmarks is that they entrench power in Washington. People like Jack Murtha, Ted Stevens, Robert Byrd, and others gain lifetime sinecures by wielding pork to extort votes and curry favor. Not only does this pervert the legislative process, but it also makes it more difficult to unseat incumbents, some of whom really need replacing. Instead of citizen legislators, it leads to first a professional class of politicians and then an elite whose power cannot be challenged. The only people who have any reasonable chance of success are those who can outspend the incumbents, and that usually means people who can write their own checks."
Check out the rest of "Why Pork Matters"...
01/25/08 4:03 PM
Former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan has her usual insightful weekly columnar observations in today's edition of The Wall Street Journal. Mostly, it's about McCain and Romney. But then at the end, Noonan lays out these pungent graphs:
"On the pundit civil wars, Rush Limbaugh declared on the radio this week, 'I'm here to tell you, if either of these two guys [Mr. McCain or Mike Huckabee] get the nomination, it's going to destroy the Republican Party. It's going to change it forever, be the end of it!'
"This is absurd. George W. Bush destroyed the Republican Party, by which I mean he sundered it, broke its constituent pieces apart and set them against each other. [emphasis mine - MT] He did this on spending, the size of government, war, the ability to prosecute war, immigration and other issues.
"Were there other causes? Yes, of course. But there was an immediate and essential cause.
"And this needs saying, because if you don't know what broke the elephant you can't put it together again. The party cannot re-find itself if it can't trace back the moment at which it became lost. It cannot heal an illness whose origin is kept obscure.
"I believe that some of the ferocity of the pundit wars is due to a certain amount of self-censorship. It's not in human nature to enjoy self-censorship. The truth will out, like steam from a kettle. It hurts to say...
01/25/08 2:47 PM
Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy is lauding passage late in the last congressional session of the OPEN Government Act and its signing by President Bush. The bill was co-sponsored by Sen. John Cornyn, R-TX, who has been the most vocal and effective advocate for FOIA the GOP side has offered in decades.
Leahy delivered a floor speech in the Senate as it reconvened and described his plans for 2008 and noted that the ink was hardly dry on the new law before the Bush administration appeared to be trying to undermine it. It has been clear from the beginning of the Bush administration that there is little appreciation there for this fact - transparency is Big Government's worst enemy.
In any case, I commend Leahy's statement to thoughtful folks everywhere. I hardly ever agree with the way Leahy, one of the Senate's most liberal Democrats, votes, and often remind those like the Vermont Democrat on the left that they can have Big Government or they can have transparent government, they can't have both. On the FOIA issue, however, he is absolutely right:
"Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, as we start a new year--and the Senate starts a new session--the American people have a new law that honors and protects their right to know. I am pleased that during the waning hours of 2007, the President signed the Leahy-Cornyn Openness Promotes Effectiveness in our National...
01/25/08 1:33 PM
I don't have a link to the video yet but Erick Erickson at Redstate has abiting retort to the Senate Republican Conference chairman's claim on the Senate floor today that it isn't the GOP's job to "tear down" the Democrats. Erick's concluding graphs are precisely on point and colorfully...
01/24/08 5:11 PM
It had to happen sooner or later....
01/24/08 12:45 PM
Roll Call is reporting details this morning that confirm Erick Erickson's post yesterday describing a bald-faced abandonment by the Senate GOP Conference of even the pretense of favoring fundamental conservative reform.
If this approach is seriously followed, it will stifle any further conservative initiatives from the White House and leave House Minority Leader John Boehner and the conservatives in the GOP caucus in the lower chamber isolated and ignored.
Outside the Beltway, the new strategy will further dispirit the GOP's conservative base and could fuel a permanent fracturing of the party as more and more conservatives realize the party's usefulness as a vehicle for achieving conservative aims has all but disappeared.
According to Roll Call's John Stanton, new conference chairman Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, is the key mover of the new strategy but it clearly has the active endorsement of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.
Roll Call is subscription-only, so I can't provide a link, but here's the top of the story:
"Senate Republicans outlined a modest election-year agenda Wednesday based on the cooperative, bipartisan approach that new Republican Conference Chairman Lamar Alexander (Tenn.) has pushed while avoiding issues like immigration and earmark reform that have caused rifts within the party.
"According to internal Conference...
01/23/08 7:39 PM
How else to explain the Tennessee senator's new strategy for the Senate Republican conference - stop being divisive, seek out areas of agreements with Democrats so we can "get things done." And maybe if Alexander is really, really nice to Harry Reid, the Senate Democratic Leader will let the Tennessean join Nancy Pelosi and President Hillary in a golf foursome next year.
If the Bob Michel reference escapes you, he was House Minority Leader back in the days when the GOP was the permanent minority and survived on the table scraps thrown their way by Tip O'Neill, Jim Wright, John Dingell, et. al. Michel was especially proud that Tip called him a friend.
Erick Erickson at Redstate.com has a searing post up describing Alexander's new strategy for embracing the GOP's return to permanent minority status. It is impossible to read these reports without concludingthat more than a few members of the Senate GOP caucus would rather be in the minority. That way they get all the earmarks they want, praise from Democrats and the Mainstream Media for being "responsible" and no responsibility for all the ways Big Government keeps getting more expensive and less efficient, and individual freedom declines at an accelerating pace.
Politics
Democrats
GOP
Conservatives
Liberals
Congress...
01/22/08 1:48 PM
Andrew Moylan of the National Taxpayers Union reports lots of buzz on Capitol Hill about President Bush's apparent decision to not sign an Executive Order that could kill the majority of earmarks from the $515 billion omnibus spending bill approved last year.
Such an Executive Order would direct executive branch agencies to ignore all earmarks air-dropped into the bill via committee reports. A recent opinion from the Congressional Research Service noted that such earmarks would not be binding because they weren't voted on by both houses of Congress and included in the actual legislative text signed by the president, as required by the Constitution.
Adding to the buzz is a New York Times story today in which House Minority Whip Roy Blunt is reported cautioning Bush against signing the Executive Order because "a furor over earmarks could upend Mr. Bush’s hopes for cooperation with Congress on other issues, including efforts to revive the economy."
The Times added this even more telling statement: "Moreover, Republicans shudder at the possibility that a Democratic president might reject all their earmarks. In effect, the White House is avoiding a clash with Congress over specific projects while preserving the president’s ability to demand a further reduction in earmarks generally."
Allow me, please, to translate those last two...
01/21/08 5:22 PM
If the title of this posts strikes you as evidence that the author is lamentably uninformed, think again. Human Events editor Jed Babbin makes a strong case in his column today that the very large numbers of Democrats and Independents who were allowed to vote in the Iowa, New Hampshire, Michigan and South Carolina primaries seriously diluted their value as GOP predictors. That means the upcoming Florida contest, which is open only to registered Republicans, is the first true GOP presidential primary of 2008.
Jed makes an especially important point in the process, noting that the issues that have heretofore dominated the GOP debates are more aligned with the interests and perspectives of Mainstream Media and voters who are distinctly not conservative or moderate Republicans.
He also suggests some questions that the candidates haven't yet had to address because of the disproportionate influence of the MSM and non-GOP voters, including this one for Sen. John McCain, R-AZ:
"Since your immigration reform bill was defeated last summer, you’ve said that you learned the lesson that border security must come first. Will you agree with conservatives that the borders must be secured -- and the security proved objectively for at least two years -- before there is any more talk of 'guest worker programs' or 'paths to citizenship'"?
I think you would see a new display...
01/09/08 7:23 PM
If that headline seems contradictory, gohere to the Sacred Heart University web site and read the full release about the school's recent survey of Americans' attitudes toward the news media. Here's a sample from the release:
“'Americans know bias and imbalance when they see it and they don’t like it. When most service organizations strive for consumer satisfaction ratings in the high eighties to low nineties, an overall positive rating of 40.7% is dismal,' said Jerry C. Lindsley, director of the Sacred Heart University Polling Institute. He added, 'Americans know that it’s just not that hard to present both sides and keep personal bias at home.'
"By four-to-one margins, Americans surveyed see The New York Times (41.9% to 11.8%) and National Public Radio (40.3% to 11.2%) as mostly or somewhat liberal over mostly or somewhat conservative.
"By a three-to-one margin, Americans see news media journalists and broadcasters (45.4% to 15.7%) as mostly or somewhat liberal over mostly or somewhat conservative.
"And, by a two-to-one margin, Americans see CNN (44.9% to 18.4%) and MSNBC (38.8% to 15.8%) as mostly or somewhat liberal over mostly or somewhat conservative.
"Just Fox News was seen as mostly and somewhat conservative (48.7%) over mostly or somewhat liberal (22.3%).
"The most trusted national TV news organizations, for accurate...
01/04/08 1:59 PM
Soon after being sworn in for his first term, President Ronald Reagan made one of the most important decisions of his entire eight years in the White House. The air traffic controllers union - PATCO - struck the federal government. Reagan fired every single one of them. Not only did that show Reagan's domestic political opponents that he meant business, it also showed the Soviets that here was an American president who meant what he said and said what he meant.
President Bush now has the opportunity for a PATCO moment on earmarks, according to The Heritage Foundation's Mike Franc, a veteran of the Capitol Hill wars and an immensely respected conservative legislative strategist.
In a superb column in Human Events, Franc argues that:
"Bush faces what students of President Ronald Reagan’s presidency might call a “PATCO” moment. PATCO, you’ll remember, was the air traffic controllers’ union that flouted the law banning strikes by government unions by declaring an illegal walkout during Reagan’s first year in office. Unlike his predecessors (who tolerated illegal strikes by government unions such as the Postal Service), Reagan stood up to the lawbreakers and promptly fired all 13,000 controllers. Those who didn’t return within 48 hours were permanently banned from federal service.
"Contrary to the conventional wisdom of the...
01/04/08 8:30 AM
Let's see now: Fred Thompson started way late, has had a tumultuous staff lineup, spent virtually nothing compared to others like Mitt Romney, was almost unseen in Iowa until three weeks ago, was either ignored or written off by the mainstream media (and many in the Blogosphere) and for the most part depended upon Internet devices like YouTube to get his message out.
Despite it all, Thompson finished third in Iowa, nosing ahead of the revived media darling John McCain , trailing only Multi-millions Mitt and the political pop-bottle rocket from Arkansas. That 17-minute conversation on YouTube earlier this week keyed a gathering recognition detected by Zogby that Thompson has a serious case to make.
And yet, hardly anybody among the talking heads this morning seems to be talking about Thompson. Even with a mediocre showing in New Hampshire next week, Thompson to have positioned himself to make this thing a three-way race heading into February.
UPDATE: FDT says he's got a ticket for the next dance
Go here for video of Fred Thompson's speech to his Iowa supporters last night. Rather boisterous bunch of people for a candidate who, according to Mike Allen and Jonathon Martin of Politico earlier this week, was allegedly going to quit if he "finished poorly" in the Iowa caucus.
You think Allen or Martin will ever trust that (anonymous) source again?
UPDATE: What's...
01/03/08 9:53 AM
Will President Bush sign an Executive Order directing federal departments and agencies to ignore earmarks not explicitly included in the text of that massive omnibus spending bill? We hear Bush is getting lots of telephone calls from Members of Congress from both parties encouraging him not to do it.
One of the most frequently voiced arguments in those calls goes something like this: "Sure, there is a bad apple here and there in the earmarks but just look at all the good things we do with the rest of them." It's an appealing argument calculated to make the hearer feel guilty about preventing the good-hearted congressman from using tax dollars to buy some new equipment for a hospital or install a new stoplight at a busy intersection?
It's an appealing argument and it's a crock! Think about it: Just because Congressman Claghorn twice helps your grandmother cross a busy street during rush hour, it doesn't give him permission to then go rob her bank.
If the projects are worthy, they should have no trouble being put through the same competitive bidding and spending prioritization processes that most other government expenditures are required to satisfy.
Porkbusters
Earmarks
Federal...
01/02/08 10:52 AM
Glenn and Helen Reynolds of Instapundit's Glenn and Helen Show spent some time recently with Bob Zubrin, the engineer and author of "Energy Victory: Winning the war on terror by breaking free of oil," a book that is likely to be one of the most important of the year. Zubrin has a host of original ideas and gripping critiques that ought to be of interest to anybody who drives or depends upon products delivered by vehicles in motion....
12/22/07 7:57 PM
It's not quite as significant a legislative accomplishment as passage last year of the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006, but passage of the OPEN Government Act of 2007 is important nevertheless.
Originally introduced with co-sponsorship by Sen. John Cornyn, R-TX, and Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-VT, in 2002, the bill makes some important improvements in the federal Freedom of Information Act. Cornyn delivered this statement to the Senate just before Congress adjourned for Christmas:
"Mr. President, it is no secret that every Senator who comes to Washington, DC, comes with a few select issues in mind which he makes his own, and which he takes a particular interest in. For me, open and transparent government has been one of those issues.
"From my time as a Texas lawyer, supreme court justice, and attorney general I know firsthand the importance, but also the difficulty of creating and enforcing open government and the free flow of information. I have always taken to heart, however, the words of James Madison, who once declared: "The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty."
"Of course, I have the advantage of coming from Texas, one of the strongest States in terms of free information and open government. In Texas, it is a matter of principle that everyone should be able to quickly and easily...
12/21/07 8:55 PM
If the headline on this post seems too good to be true, be assured it reflects an expert legal opinion, that of the Congressional Research Service. The opinion is at the heart of an urgent joint letter sent today to President Bush by the Porkbusters coalition. Here's the key graph:
"A December 18 legal analysis by the Congressional Research Service concluded that 'because the language of committee reports does not meet the procedural requirements of Article I of the Constitution -- specifically, bicameralism and presentment - they are not laws and, therefore, are not legally binding on executive agencies... Given both the implied legal and constitutional authority as well as the long-standing accepted process of Presidents, it appears that a President can, if he so chooses, issue an executive order with respect to earmarks contained solely in committee reports and not in any way incorporated into the legislative text.'"
If CRS is correct, then the coalition urges Bush to sign an Executive Order directing executive branch agencies to only recognize earmarks that are included in the text of the just-passed Omnibus spending bill.
Go here to read the full text of the letter.
And here is a helpful Q & A about the ins and outs of such an Executive Order:
Earmark Executive Order: Q & A
Q: Why must the President issue an executive order to instruct his...
12/21/07 1:18 PM
The Daily Oklahoman reports this morning that Southwestern Oklahoma State University officials say they have a policy banning the placement Christmas and other religious decorations on public areas of the campus.
The newspaper said university spokesman Brian Adler explained that employees were asked to keep public areas of the campus free religious decor because not all students celebrate Christmas as a religious holiday.
The Oklahoman also quoted SWOSU president John Hayes saying "the university attempted to prevent the appearance as a state agency of endorsing any particular religion."
Adler added, according to The Oklahoman, that "there's no ban on Christmas" and "it was blown way out of proportion."
UPDATE: SWOSU head, Liberty Counsel discuss written guidelines
Southwestern Oklahoma State University John Hayes said in a telephone interview this morning that he talked earlier today with Matt Staver of Liberty Counsel about how the university can develop written guidelines for its existing policy governing religious displays on the campus.
"We don't have any written guidelines now, but Matt tells me the court cases are pretty clear that when you do have something like a nativity scene on public property, like on City Hall, you also have to have some secular items with it," said John Hayes, SWOSU's president. Staver promised to...
12/20/07 8:08 PM
Well now, this has certainly been an interesting day. Let's review:
1. LIBERTY COUNSEL issues a news release claiming that:
“Southwestern Oklahoma State University (SWOSU), has issued a disturbing policy which requires all employees to refrain from using the word 'Christmas' in oral or written form. This directive was given by the university upon legal advice of the Oklahoma Attorney General, W.A. Drew Edmondson.”
The release quoted Matt Staver, Liberty Counsel's head honcho and dean of the Liberty University School of Law, and noted that a demand letter had been sent to SWOSU officials.
2. Figuring the head of an accredited law school would not have issued a news release without having confirmed its contents beforehand, I posted on the issue here on Tapscott's Copy Desk, quoting the release in full and noting that Edmondson is the same guy who charged the "Oklahoma Three" with violating a state law requiring initiative petition circulators to be Oklahoma residents. I called Edmondson the "Okie Napoleon."
3. A raft of people read that post and started calling Edmondson's office and Liberty Counsel. It appears nobody expected such an avalanche of reaction.
4. Edmondson then issued a witty statement denying that he ever gave "legal advice" to SWOSU telling the school to "refrain from using the word Christmas in oral or...
12/20/07 7:07 PM
Well, I will say this for Drew Edmondson, he can display a little sense of humor. In response to the furor incited by the Liberty Counsel news release earlier today, Edmondson issued the following statement denying that he ever told anybody they couldn't say "Merry Christmas."
Edmondson's statement follows here in its entirety. You can find his official web site here:
"Attorney General Drew Edmondson didn’t give a second thought to a caller from Texas who called his office this morning to wish him a merry Christmas. His executive assistant returned the man’s well wishes and hung up the phone. In fact, no one in the attorney general’s office thought it at all strange to receive Christmas greetings until the calls started pouring in – by the dozens.
"The problem seemingly started after a group calling themselves the 'Liberty Counsel' issued a press release stating that an administrator had ordered employees at Southwestern Oklahoma State University (SWOSU) in Weatherford to refrain from using the word Christmas in oral or written form. According to the press release, the action was taken after the university received legal advice to that effect from Attorney General Drew Edmondson.
“'Some of the callers were quite upset,' Edmondson said. 'The idea that a state official would ban Christmas just days before such a holy day...
12/20/07 12:40 PM
Oklahoma attorney general Drew Edmondson drew national scorn earlier this year when he arrested Paul Jacob of the Sam Adams Alliance and Citizens in Charge, and two colleagues on trumped-up charges that they violated a discredited state law requiring all circulators of initiative petititons in Sooner Land to be residents.
Now the Okie Napoleon is banning Christmas!
I am not making this up (because I am from Oklahoma and this guy is an embarrassment).
Edmondson issued an advisory opinion to officials at Southwestern Oklahoma State University in Weatherford advising them that the word "Christmas" should not be spoken by any employee of the state school, not written in any official holiday decorations.
Matt Staver and Liberty Counsel issued the following statement on the Edmondson action:
"Southwestern Oklahoma State University (SWOSU), has issued a disturbing policy which requires all employees to refrain from using the word 'Christmas' in oral or written form. This directive was given by the university upon legal advice of the Oklahoma Attorney General, W.A. Drew Edmondson. Liberty Counsel sent a demand letter to SWOSU following a complaint from a university affiliate.
"John Misak, the Director of Human Resources, recently visited various universitydepartments and employee groups and informed everyone that any decorations featuring the word 'Christmas'...
12/20/07 9:05 AM
Barbara Hollingsworth, my colleague here at The Washington Examiner, took a look at some of Sen. Jim Webb's recent statements and votes on Irag and came away with this conclusion: "And when a senator’s walk doesn’t even come close to matching his talk, he shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it."
Go here to find out why Hollingsworth reached that conclusion. Amen, Barbara!
12/19/07 11:21 PM
Pictured is a hard copy of the 3,500+ page omnibus spending bill just approved by Congress. The bill consolidates 11 regular appropriations bills that were supposed to be done months ago into one monstrous assembly of expenditures totaling $515 billion, including more than 9,400 earmarks. The text was posted around midnight Sunday night and voted on within a day.
In other words, every senator and representative voted on this bill without having read it.
UPDATE: Democracy Project says it's not new
Bruce Kesler at Democracy Project saw the above photo and remembered something President Ronald Reagan said during his 1987 State of the Union address. Looks like Congress has come a long way in the years since. So did the good folks at ReadtheBill.org....
12/19/07 12:46 AM
It is no coincidence that this latest evidence of the plunge in congressional approval ratings comes at the same time as Congress gave up on trying to pass regular appropriations bills and instead went for a massive omnibus spending bill that includes nearly 700 pages of earmarks.
And no, that is not a typo in the headline.
12/18/07 7:58 PM
The Sam Adams Alliance has announced the first six winners of the organization's Sammies award. I will post copies of videos involved as soon as they become available. In the meantime, here is the Adams release on the winners:
CHICAGO--The Sam Adams Alliance & Foundation are pleased to announce the six winners of their inaugural Sammie Awards. The awards are designed to recognize outstanding citizen leadership and creativity nationwide, and are being given this year to individuals and groups from Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas and Washington.
"We are proud to see so many citizens participating in the effort for greater government accountability and transparency," said Bob Costello, Sam Adams Foundation president. "We hope the Sammies can highlight their efforts and encourage them-and others-to continue working to advance the ideals of liberty."
* Melyssa Donaghy of Indianapolis won the $5,000 "Tea Party" award for staging numerous creative protests around the state in response to Indiana's increasing property tax burden.
* Sal Costello of Austin, Texas won the $5,000 Best Short Satire Film award for his animation highlighting the "double taxation" associated with Austin's highway toll rates.
* Leon Drolet of Macomb, Mich. won the $5,000 Best Short Documentary award for his video footage of the Michigan Taxpayers...
12/18/07 3:34 PM
Being able to search that Omnibus spending bill provides all kinds of different ways of analyzing the $515.7 billion monstrosity. For example, a ranking of how many times the names of senators appear in the 3,500+ pages document gives an interesting insight into the degree to which they influenced the content of the measure.
While the vast majority of such appearances are in connection with specific appropriations, thereare some minor exceptions. One example would be "Clinton," which can either denote the junior senator from New York or the city of the same name.
Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-NY, tops the list with his last name appearing 323 times. Next comes Sen. Patty Murray, D-WA, with 310 appearances and in third is Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, with 301 appearances. Interesting that despite the distractions of the presidential campaign trail, Clinton 's name is literally all over the omnibus spending bill.
Looking at the rest, we find in fourth, fifth and eighth the only Republicans in the top 10. These are Sen. Arlen Specter, R-PA, (285), Sen. Thad Cochran, R-MS, (242), and Sen. Richard Shelby, R-AL, (217). Senate Armed Services Committtee Chairman Carl Levin, D-MI, is fifth with 237, followed by Sen. Diane Feinstein, D-CA, with 234, Sen. Blance Lincoln, D-AR, with 215 and Sen. Deborah Stabenow, D-MI, in a tie with Sen. Robert Menendez , D-NJ, with 208.
There are...
12/18/07 12:19 PM
Mary Katherine Ham does some video magic with that last GOP presidential debate and a certain famous movie from the 1960s that starred Jack Nicholson. This is...
12/17/07 2:34 PM
A bunch of folks connected with the Porkbusters Coalition and various citizens groups in the nation's capitol are reading the 3,500+ pages of that $522 billion Omnibus Spending bill being considered by Congress today.
Despite the bill being posted on the House Rules Committee's web site as a PDF document that is scrollable - i.e. searching takes a long time - all kinds of earmarks and other pork barrel spending provisions are being found as fast as people can read the text.
The Heritage Foundation has established a web site called Omnibusting where many of the fruits of the labor of those going through the bill will be posted.
The Heritage site is just one reason why this week may see an historic illustration of the Internet being a tool of unprecedented power to link citizens across the country in exposing an attempt by career politicians to slip a massive spending bill stuffed to the gills with spending goodies for their favorite special interests past the public without anybody but the folks who wrote it knowing what is contained.
It took me, for example, about five minutes of reading in the Labor-HHS portion of the bill to find a section of non-competitive contracts for varying amounts to specific recipients, including $2.6 million to the National Center on Education and the Economy, to be awarded within 30 days of enactment of the measure.
Curious about the NCEE, I...
12/17/07 2:17 PM
Danny Glover at Beltway Blogroll took a look at The Washington Independent, which bills itself as a progressive online news operation that is not captive of the corporations that control the mainstream media and finds a lot of opinion being presented as news.
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12/14/07 6:46 PM
Just got this email from a colleague explaining the above:
Mike Demkovich, a student at the University of Illinois and a former intern with Sam Adams, designed this ad for his senior portfolio. 500 are going up around the country today. Just kidding, but they should. Happy Friday!"
I agree, they should, but here's my question: Why stop at 500? "Sam Adams" is the Sam Adams Alliance, a libertarian/conservative group dedicated to promoting grass roots activism on a variety of issues, including especially transparency and accountability in government. Go here for more.
Sunshine Week
FOIA
Freedom of Information
Public Right to Know
Open Government
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Porkbusters
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12/14/07 1:32 PM
Things are getting hot in both parties' presidential contests, with charges and counter-charges - sometimes followed by apologies - beginning to fly with increasing frequency. CBN's David Brody, who has seen a few campaigns in his day, asked why former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee doesn't respond more frequently and aggressively when he's the object of criticism by a GOP rival.
Brody's column inspired Huckabee's Joe Carter to offer the following response and explanation. I have tremendous respect for Joe, who first became well-known in the Blogosphere as the mind behind Evangelical Outpost. Frankly, I'm not sure about Huckabee or any of the other GOP contenders but Joe's response offers some interesting perspectives:
"In his article "Romney, Thompson Body Slam Huckabee," CBN's David Brody raises a point that a lot of people ask me about:
Thompson and Romney have big staffs with lots of "oppo research" staffers. Huckabee does not. He relies on free air time and that's why you see him on the cable shows all the time. You can argue that it's not a fair fight but hey, this is the rough and tumble world of politics. If Huckabee wants to become the nominee, he's going to need to start being way more aggressive in combating these attacks through email and surrogates. He does push back on some of this but one email blast a day compared to multiple ones a...
12/13/07 12:10 PM
Nearly eight years ago, Bill Beach, director of The Heritage Foundation's Center for Data Analysis, and I invited Gary Bass of OMB Watch over for a chat about the possibility of our two organizations collaborating in an effort to put all federal spending on the Internet. Bill and Gary are still in their respective positions, while I was then director of Heritage's Center for Media and Public Policy.
Heritage, of course, is a conservative think tank and OMB Watch is a liberal advocacy group, but we found that we shared a passionate belief that taxpayers ought to be able to see how the government is spending their tax dollars and that the Internet was perfectly suited for providing the needed tool to make such transparency a reality.
Nothing in the way of an official collaboration came from that discussion, but it was still the start of an informal working relationship that helped pave the wave for the Internet-based coalition that ultimately proved indispensable in winning passage of the Federal Funding Accountabilityand Transparency Act of 2006 (FFATA) and the establishment of a landmark new web site, USASpending.gov.
I vividly recall being told by a veteran Republican congressional budget aide in the weeks leading up to that meeting with Beach and Bass that federal spending was simply too complicated and too widespread to be tracked on the Internet. That aide's...
12/13/07 11:50 AM
This item is on the Senate Republican Leadership blog this morning. Of course, it ought to be pointed out again and again that when they were in the majority for a dozen years, the Republicans in Congress sent the annual number of earmarks skyrocketing.
REP. DAVID OBEY (D-WI): “I'm not in the business of trying to pave the way for $70 billion or $90 billion for Iraq for $10 billion in table scraps.” (Democrats Are Rethinking Year-End Budget Strategy, The Wall Street Journal, 12/11/07)
DEMOCRAT “TABLE SCRAPS” IN OTHER TERMS:
$10 Billion Could Buy A Six Pound Chicken, Three Pounds Of Fresh Potatoes, Two Pounds Of Fresh Green Beans And A Pot To Cook Them In For Every Household In America
$10 Billion Could Pay The Salary Of 481,918 Enlisted Soldiers. (Numbers Based On An E-3 Level Basic Pay,Office of the Secretary of Defense, www.defenselink.mil, accessed, 12/11/07)
$10 Billion Could Pay One Year’s Tuition At Harvard For 229,068 High School Graduates. (Based On The 2006-2007 Undergraduate Tuition Rates, Harvard.edu, accessed 12/11/07)
$10 Billion Could Pay The New York Yankees Annual Payroll 51 Times. (2007 Yankee Payroll $195,229,045, ESPN.com, accessed 12/11/07)
$10 Billion Could Buy Every Child In America Between The Ages Of 10 And 14 A PlayStation 3 For Christmas.
$10 Billion Could Extend Tax Relief For Parents And Tax Relief For Small...
12/12/07 3:28 PM
Need a job? Got a car? Have a high tolerance for absurdity? An unidentified member of the U.S. Senate has placed the following employment ad seeking a driver. Curiously, the ad doesn't specify if an "appropriate " car is one that identifies or conceals the occupation or identity of its passenger. And what's with the need for a driver with "a natural discretion" working for a U.S. senator? Do the daily driving instructions come in a brown paper bag?...
12/11/07 5:57 PM
The headline abovesays it all - The top two Senate GOP leaders held a news conference this afternoon and as has happened over and over and over again since the Reagan administration at which they undermined a conservative success in the House.
Here's the money quote from Toomey:
“Unfortunately, Senator McConnell and Trent Lott are perpetuating the practice of wasteful pork-barrel spending. Rather than part with his own and his colleagues’ pet projects, Senator McConnell announced his intention to offer an amendment that will reduce spending in the Omnibus bill by about two percent across the board, including earmarks. Trent Lott jumped to Senator McConnell’s defense, arguing that ‘Earmarks are justified and legitimate . . . I wouldn't give up my earmarks.’"
You can read the rest of Toomey's statement here at the Club for Growth web site.
Why is Lott waiting until the end of the year to leave the Senate? Did somebody say something about a "Leave Now, Lott" petition?
UPDATE: More on Lott
Politico reports the rest of that Lott quote.
Porkbusters
Earmarks
Federal...
12/11/07 3:53 PM
Courtesy of my friends at The Heritage...
12/11/07 2:50 PM
Do not miss Politico's profile of Sen. Tom Coburn, R-OK. Coburn has proven that one senator armed with conviction, determination and persistence can make a big difference, as illustrated by this quote from the article:
"Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican, has long been known as the Senate’s gadfly, crusading against wasteful government spending. In the last year, however, this gadfly has gone through a metamorphosis and is now more of a scorpion: If you’re not careful, he’ll kill your bill."
The article notes that a growing number of senators have their aides take bills they want to introduce to Coburn before they introduce it, just to make sure it will pass muster with the Oklahoman and his able staff. That is a position of genuine and significant...
12/11/07 2:21 PM
How receptive is the American public to the possibilities of E-government such as accessing government documents and services via the Internet and participating in processes like regulatory proposal comments? This passage from testimony this morning by OMB's Karen Evans provides some interesting data:
"Between September 30, 2006 through September 30, 2007, Regulations.gov:
* Received 71 million hits (5.9 million hits per month), a 26% increase in hits compared to FY2006;
* Enabled the public to view or download more than 32 million pages, an 88% increase in pages viewed compared to FY2006;
* Posted more than 920,000 documents for public access, a 206% increase in documents compared to FY2006; and
* Enabled agencies to post more than 114,000 public submissions (including public comments submitted by paper, email, and fax).
"As of October 1, 2007:
* 26 Federal Departments and Agencies have completed Federal Docket Management (FDMS) implementation which facilitates functionality on Regulations.gov;
* Implemented Federal Departments & Agencies represent over 80% of Federal rulemaking output; and
* Federal Departments and Agencies representing over 90% of Federal rulemaking output will be using FDMS by Q1 FY2008.
"Overall, in FY 2007, Regulations.gov has received more than 110,000 public comments on behalf of 100 agencies, and is a prime example of...
12/11/07 12:13 PM
House GOPers are crowing about this report in Roll Call:
“With House Democratic leaders poised to introduce and passa massive appropriations bill today covering funding for nearly every federal agency, Republican staffers and outside interest groups prepared for a frenetic race to figure out what is in the bill before it gets to the president’s desk.
“Claiming they have been locked out of final drafting of the massive spending measure, Republicans are planning to assemble a network of experts — one staffer called it a ‘virtual butcher shop’ — to dissect what are likely to be hundreds of pages of legislation, looking for earmarks …
“‘We are assembling a ‘butcher shop,’” said Brian Kennedy, spokesman for Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio). ‘We are going to have counsels and policy experts from every committee of jurisdiction scouring the bill.’
“Kennedy said the effort will involve House and Senate GOP staff, and will coordinate with outside advocacy groups as well. ‘We are going to have a mountain [of paper] to dig through in a very short amount of time,’ Kennedy said. ‘The more experts we have scouring through legalese the better.’” (Roll Call, 12/11/07)
I think it's a great idea that the GOPers are devoting more resources to exposing pork...
12/11/07 8:15 AM
Imagine the dilemma facing White House reporters telling the world about a decision by President Clinton - do they always say "President Hillary Clinton" and "President Bill Clinton" even when there is only one sitting "President Clinton" in the Oval Office?
The nomenclature challenge is only the smallest of problems presented by the prospect of having two presidents who are married to each other in the White House at the same time, according to Sally Bedell Smith in today's edition of The Wall Street Journal.
Smith is author of one of the finest books yet on the Clintons, "For Love of Politics: Bill and Hillary Clinton, the White House years." Besides being a solidly researched and wonderfully detailed account of how the Clinton marriage affected virtually every aspect of the Clinton administration - from personnel and policy decisions to the disposition of particular Secret Service agents - Smith provides a disturbing look into the likely parameters of their relationship and its impact on vital decisions in a second Clinton tenure at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Smith is an accomplished journalist and book author, having previously penned "Grace and Power: The private world of the Kennedy White House," and "Diana in Search of Herself: Portrait of a troubled princess." FULL DISCLOSURE: Smith's husband, Stephen,...
12/11/07 8:03 AM
New AP poll finds growing support for the proposition that the U.S. military effort is moving toward a successful outcome in Iraq.
12/10/07 8:52 AM
Jihad Watch links to a horrifying story about a young boy being hung from a mulberry tree because the Taliban accused him of giving info to the British about roadside bombs and other intelligence. And for all of those who think it's just the radicals like the Taliban that do such outrageous things, consider this story from the London Times Online about a British Imam who is determined to kill his daughter because she converted to...
12/10/07 8:49 AM
Things just keep getting weirder on the global warming scene. Doug Bandow says they are now trying to shut down air travel in Britain by targeting travel agents. Let's see, about three percent of greenhouse gases are the product of those big jets in the sky, so that makes a lot of sense....
12/09/07 5:22 PM
Former national term limits leader Paul Jacob and two colleagues got an early Christmas present this week from Oklahoma's anti-democratic Attorney General Drew Edmondson - he re-indicted them on trumped-up charges of violating a state law of doubtful constitutionality. Free Paul Jacob has more...
12/09/07 10:21 AM
The good folks at Legistorm - they first became famous for posting the salaries of congressional staffers - have come up with a great new feature called "The Score." It's basically a dashboard for keeping track of what is happening in Congress, from the latest floor action to committee meeting schedules, cartoons, GAO reports and the latest news about it all. This is a great deal....
12/09/07 8:28 AM
Jack Flack has the answer. Plus some trenchant observations on why soon-to-have -a-federal-prison-address super lawyer Bill Lerach's attempts to spin his way out of accountability for participating in a long-running "racketeering enterprise" won't...
12/09/07 8:19 AM
Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch notes an odd case in Florida that seems to be getting an inordinate amount of federal attention. Also, don't miss his question about Jihadist questioner plants in the presidential debates.
12/09/07 8:13 AM
You heard about NBC rejected Freedom's Watch ads thanking U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan? Turns out the guy who made the rejection decision is a frequent contributor to Democrats like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. RedState has details from the Majority Accountability Project.
UPDATE: NBC to 'amend' policy
Scott Johnson at Powerline says NBC has decided to change. excuse me, amend the policy its counsel cited to justify rejecting Freedom's Watch ads.
Did somebody say something about guys in their...
12/09/07 8:08 AM
Looks like investors are warming to the Iraq bonds, which Bloomberg Business reports are up more than 15 percent, second only to those of Ecuador? I don't understand that but the clearly the surge is having a positive effect in a lot of places you wouldn't be inclined to think of first.
12/09/07 8:03 AM
Salena Zito explains all: "Explaining a Huckabee scenario is like some Yogi Berra-ism: How he wins is the same reason he loses. He's a political mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma." The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review columnist also explains Romney, McCain and...
12/07/07 6:16 PM
It would be a toss-up between Mark Steyn and Victor Davis Hanson for my favorite essayist writing on current affairs, but there is one huge difference between the two men - Steyn is under attack by a bunch of people who are determined to silence all critics of radical Islam. (BTW, Hanson will be, too, sooner or later).
These people going after Steyn have billions of dollars behind them, a world-wide network of other resources and the growing intellectual bankruptcy of multi-culturalism undermining the will and capacity of those who should be Steyn's first defenders to recognize the threat, much less respond to it effectively and in a timely manner.
MacLean's, the Canadian magazine, ran a lengthy excerpt from Steyn's most recent book, "America Alone: The end of the world as we know it." Not surprisingly, the article drew a huge response from the magazine's readers, including unfortunately some government officials who think it is their responsibility to protect Canadians from having their minds tarnished by political incorrect news and opinion.
What followed is something that is becoming all-too-familiar a routine here in America, especially on college campuses: Two law students and a former government attorney said they were "offended" and filed complaints with two human rights commissions. Official investigations have been opened, apologies demanded,...
12/06/07 8:22 AM
Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney speaks later today at the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library in College Station, Texas in an address on his view of the role of religious faith in American public life. Following are excerpts from the Romney speech:
"There are some who may feel that religion is not a matter to be seriously considered in the context of the weighty threats that face us. If so, they are at odds with the nation's founders, for they, when our nation faced its greatest peril, sought the blessings of the Creator. And further, they discovered the essential connection between the survival of a free land and the protection of religious freedom. In John Adam's words: 'We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion... Our constitution was made for a moral and religious people.'
"Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom. Freedom opens the windows of the soul so that man can discover his most profound beliefs and commune with God. Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone."…
"When I place my hand on the Bible and take the oath of office, that oath becomes my highest promise to God. If I am fortunate to become your president, I will serve no one religion, no one group, no one cause, and no one...
12/05/07 1:29 PM
This will come as no surprise to anybody familiar with American history, but those Damn Yankees are at it again, this time pushing an energy "reform" bill that mandates billions of dollars in higher energy bills for residents of the sunny South.
The bill includes a requirement that utilities generate at least15 percent of their energy using renewable energy generation methods like windmills and solar energy. Residents of Southern states like Virginia, Tennessee and Texas that have less of the needed resources to generate energy using those methods than other states will see substantial rate hikes.
American Electric Power, a utilities industry group, estimates the 15 percent renewables mandate will cost Virginia residents $1.1 billion by 2030, while the mandate will cost Texas residents $700 million and Oklahoma residents $900 million.
Could it be that maybe this bill is in retaliation for all those "Drive 90 - Freeze Another Damn Yankee" bumper stickers from the first energy crisis back in the 1970s?
Politics
Democrats
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11/30/07 5:15 PM
It didn't long for the depth of subversion of the CNN/YouTube Republican debate by backers of various Democratic presidential candidates to be become public, thanks mainly to bloggers like Michelle Malkin and Hugh Hewitt., and journalists like The Wall Street Journal's John Fund (HT to Glenn Reynolds).
Demands for firings at CNN soon followed. Personally, I would add to the list of folks to be put on unemployment some editors and media reporters at various major Mainstream Media trade outlets that have studiously refused to cover the failure of CNN to insure the integrity of the debate.
But the most constructive suggestion, at least in my view, of what to do about the scandal comes from RedState.com and Human Events who have jointly offered to host a real Republican presidential debate:
"We have a base of readers who represent the Republican wing of the Republican Party. You – and the Republican Party – deserve to face the questions posed by undecided Republicans, not Democratic activists. We will solicit and obtain YouTube videos from those people and vet each questioner to establish that they are – really - - undecided Republicans. We hope to include soldiers in the field in Iraq, Young Republicans, and others who still have not decided among you.
"Today, allow us to make you this offer: We will organize a debate at a time and date amenable to...
11/29/07 12:27 PM
Take away all the glorified rhetoric about professionalism and training and the bottom line to the opposition of the gallery is explained by fear of competition sparked by new technology. And guess what, this is not a new development.
John Wonderlich, a colleague from the Open House Project, points to this passage of a book by Donald Ritchie, Reporting from Washington, concerning the gallery from the beginning of the New Deal:
"What most shook the press corps from complacency was the periodic intrusion of new technology. From the telegraph to radio, television, and digital electronics, technological innovations not only speeded delivery of the news but stimulated competition within the media.
"Each invention introduced a new group of reporters who felt less bound by their predecessors' rules and traditions. Over time, the outsiders invariably forced the veteran insiders to adjust to new practices. But initially reporters for each new media met stiff resistance from the press corps's establishment.
"Since 1880, the U.S. government has ceded the authority to determine who qualifies for a press pass to cover the Capitol, the White House, and the federal agencies to members of the press corps themselves. Reporters elect committees of correspondents who grant formal accreditation, thereby defining, and restricting, their own trade.
"The newspapermen who...
11/15/07 5:40 PM
.... now comes word there is more money going to Democrats - the chief proponents of campaign finance reform - than ever. It seems that virtually all of the top industries have increased their political giving for the 2008 campaign, according to a study by the Center for Responsive Politics. Giving for Democrats is way up, while giving to Republicans is staying flat.
"A power shift in Congress and a wide-open race for the White House add up to record-breaking contributions from the nation's biggest givers," said Sheila Krumholz, CRP's executive director. "There is an intensity to the fundraising for 2008 that we've never seen before, which means the candidates and parties will be all the more beholden to their biggest donors."
Krumholz said industry and special interest groups are giving more to Democrats both in Congress and to Democratic presidential candidates. On average, such groups are giving 57 percent of their contributions to Democrats. That is a 14 percentage point shift from the 2006 and 2004 when Democrats got only 43 percent.
Biggest givers include all the usual suspects, with lawyers and law firms increasing their giving 52 percent, real estate is up 51 percent and the entertainment industry up 68 percent. Curiously, healthcare and insurance industry giving are only up 23...
11/15/07 9:34 AM
Gallup's latest survey turns up extensive evidence of deep public disgust with the performance of the Democratic majority in Congress. On six major issues, Gallup found solid majorities either disappointed or angry with the performance of the Democrats.
On Iraq, for example, 68 percent are either disappointed or angry, while on the economy, the figure is 53 percent. For healthcare and dealing with the federal budget deficit, the figure is 60 percent, it's 65 percent on immigration and 55 percent on government reform.
Only on terrorism did Gallup find less than a clear majority of people saying they are disappointed or angry with the Democratic majority and even there the figure is 49 percent.
Those figures indicate a wholesale failure on the part of the Democratic majority in Congress to deliver on its two fundamental promises in the 2006 election campaign, to clean up Republican corruption in Washington and to change U.S. policy on Iraq.
But before Republicans get too happy about seeing the Democrats abysmal failure, I suggest the root of these numbers isn't simply a dissatisfaction with policy failures, but rather an indication of a deeper disappointment borne of the widespread failure of Big Government.
We have created a federal Leviathan that promises to deliver something for everybody, with its regulations and taxation directing virtually every corner of daily life....
11/13/07 6:52 PM
Give this a read and then let me know what you think.
11/13/07 6:35 PM
Did you know that if you went on a shopping spree today with $1,000 in your hot little hands and then repeated the exercise every day until you got rid of $1 billion, you would be shopping every day for 2,740 years?
And while you are contemplating that little piece of numerical amazement, ponder this: Uncle Sam spends a billion bucks every three and a half hours , 24/7 and 365.
Now you know why the odds are a billion to one against any of us getting to go shopping some day with a thousand bucks in our hands.
You can find many more such amazing facts about the real-life meaning of Big Government here where House Republican Whip Roy Blunt of Missouri is circulating. You can also contribute to updates to the book by emailing your suggestions to...
