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And every American who reads political blogs is in possession of classified information. Of course, with the Government classifying such things as the inability of water to flow uphill, that doesn’t mean a lot.
Yes:
Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif., represents a district that includes suburbanites angry about the lack of [immigration] enforcement, as well as agricultural interests desperate for guest workers. As he sees it, the recent protests, especially marches that featured the Mexican flag, “really did harden up people’s positions. It really politicized the whole issue. It took away any hope we have of having a workable policy.”
Now: “I don’t think that there’s a political solution that makes sense from a policy standpoint that can possibly come out of this.”
[…]
I can only say that when I read, “no trabajo” [no work] and “no escuela” [no school] and “no compra” (no shopping) and “no venta” (no selling), my response is: “No mas.” No more.
Save for striking air traffic controllers — who were warned by Ronald Reagan that he would fire them en masse — I can’t think of any other group that has overplayed its hand as obviously as the illegals have.
Meanwhile, the Houston Chronicle explains — ever so gentilly — why tomorrow’s boycott won’t be all it’s cracked up to be.
Thomas Bray:
And just who is the profiteer here? While the average profit on the sale of a gallon of gasoline is nine cents, the average state and federal tax on that same gallon of gasoline is about 45 cents. And if we must have an investigation, how about investigating the extent to which government regulations drive up prices and block new production?
As usual, Washington politicians are eager to ride the latest “oil crisis” to fame and glory, proposing all sorts of inane ideas to deal with it. At the core of most of them is the populist notion that profit is a four-letter word — and never mind that the profits of many other industries, including banking and food and beverages, are far heftier than in the oil industry. (Link)
Relatedly, for an excellent primer in free market economics, I commend to your attention Henry Hazlitt’s seminal work “Economics in One Lesson,” available freely here in HTML or here in PDF. First published in 1946, the book’s facts and figures are obviously out of date; but its truths are timeless.
Reuters:
Antonio Villaraigosa, Los Angeles’ first Latino mayor in the modern era, will skip huge pro-immigration rallies planned for Monday to meet with pro football officials in Dallas, leaving organizers feeling like “a ship without a captain.” (Link)
— U.S. Rep. Christopher Shays, R-CT
For crying out loud, why not 86 the cloak-and-dagger — and the demagoguery — and just tell people the truth?
Associated Press:
Rush Limbaugh was arrested Friday on a prescription fraud charge after reaching a deal with prosecutors that will see the single count dismissed if he continues treatment and doesn’t violate the law, Limbaugh’s attorney said.
Of this, Lorie Byrd writes:
Maybe this means at least one political prosecution has almost ended.
Maybe so. But all drug war prosecutions are political. Indeed, the drug war is the perfect example of malum prohibitum. In the natural order of things, you and I would insist — violently, if necessary — that we had a right to expect our neighbor not to murder, rape or rob us. But we would not assert a right to kick in the door of his home — or, as in Limbaugh’s case, to take his private medical records — to control what he put into his own body.
If the Government is our agent, by what logic do you and I transfer to it a power we would not claim for ourselves?
The drug war is morally illegitimate. Fortunately, we can hope for its end.
The denial of service attack against Hosting Matters, which hosts some of the most prominent center-right sites in the blogosphere (as well as some of the less prominent ones, like mine) is resolved:
I have the culprits hogtied in my office and was about to insert bamboo splinters up their toenails, but I have decided instead to make them watch C-Span coverage of congressional floor debates about Internet security.
ADDED —
DOWN: I spoke too soon. It doesn’t help that here in central Houston we’re also experiencing periodic interruptions of broadband service.
What a shock:
Mohammed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said Friday that Iran has enriched uranium in defiance of a March UN Security Council demand that it immediately suspend its nuclear enrichment program.
Human Events:
On Monday, May 1, large numbers of people nationwide are expected to protest in support of amnesty for illegal immigrants, with some aiming to “close” American cities.
[…]
In spite of the pleas by Mayor Villaraigosa and Cardinal Mahony, the Democrat leaders of the California State Assembly have decided to call their own boycott for May 1, canceling legislative session that day in deference to the protests. But, showing that their commitment only goes so far, they declared Monday a “check-in” day so as not to forfeit their $459 tax-free per diem for the weekend and Monday. A true legislative walkout would have led to lawmakers losing per diem pay for Saturday and Sunday, as well as Monday since spending more than three consecutive days away from the Capitol triggers a halt in the highly-prized extra pay.
Don’t politicians make you want to hurl?
My own view is that legislators should be paid only for days they are out of session.
(Thanks to Hit & Run.)
Amen:
There is no reason to suppose that the State will ever be less than fully zealous in its efforts to secure the tax revenue it needs. The same cannot be said for the State’s efforts to ensure that its citizens receive proper notice before the State takes action against them. In this case, the State is exerting extraordinary power against a property owner — taking and selling a house he owns. It is not too much to insist that the State do a bit more to attempt to let him know about it when the notice letter addressed to him is returned unclaimed.
The Commissioner’s effort to provide notice to Jones of an impending tax sale of his house was insufficient to satisfy due process given the circumstances of this case. The judgment of the Arkansas Supreme Court is reversed, and the case is remanded for proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
By now, you’ve probably heard about Andrea Clark, a 54 year-old woman from whom St. Luke’s Hospital in Houston reportedly plans to withdraw life support Sunday.
I won’t comment on the specifics of Ms. Clark’s case. Among other things, the facts are unclear. We’ve heard only the family’s side of the story. Since the hospital is barred by statute from disclosing confidential information, we have not heard its side of the story. But I will make two general observations.
First, if bloggers and their readers want to use medical terminology, that’s fine. But as an RN, I wish they’d make an effort to understand it and use it with precision.
For example, it’s superfluous in this kind of case to insist that the patient isn’t brain dead. Of course the patient isn’t brain dead. No hospital refers the case of a brain dead patient to an ethics committee, and for good reason: if the patient is brain dead, the patient is dead. Brain death is the very definition of death.
Secondly, while it’s legitimate to point out when a hospital’s actions are inconsistent with the wishes of the patient or of the patient’s family, that fact doesn’t answer this question: “Is continued treatment medically futile?” The answer to that question requires medical judgment, not familial preference. In my experience, patients and their families often ask for things that are medically inappropriate. For instance, it’s not uncommon to hear a patient ask for antibiotics to treat a common cold. But a cold is caused by a virus and antibiotics only work against bacteria. Accordingly, a responsible physician will decline the patient’s request. (The promiscuous use of antibiotics has played a critical role in the emergence of drug-resistant “super bugs.”)
If you’d care to read the Texas Advance Directives Act (also known as the Texas Futile Care Law), the full text is here. This Act immunizes Texas hospitals from criminal and civil liability when, after following the required procedures, they withdraw treatment in cases deemed medically futile. The Act was passed unanimously by both houses of the Texas Legislature and signed into law by then-Governor George W. Bush.
Enjoy!
It’s called railroading:
DURHAM, N.C. — Defense attorneys are questioning the method used by Durham police to obtain a woman’s identification of two Duke University lacrosse players in an alleged rape last month.
[…]
Two lacrosse players, 19-year-old Collin Finnerty and 20-year-old Reade Seligmann, were charged Tuesday with rape and kidnapping in connection with the alleged assault.
No DNA evidence linked any of the 46 lacrosse team members to the woman, and authorities said the arrests were made based on her photo identification of the players.
[…]
To obtain the identification, Durham police showed the woman photos of the 46 lacrosse team members one at a time, sources said. The woman said she was 100 percent certain that Finnerty and Seligmann were involved and 90 percent certain that a third player was involved.
[…]
No other photos were shown to the woman, sources said, and the defense attorneys maintain that police should have included photos of other young, white men in the photo array to make the identifications legitimate.
[…]
U.S. Department of Justice guidelines on using photo identifications call for using a photo array that includes only one suspect and at least five “fillers,” or other people who generally fit the witness’ description of the perpetrator, for each array.
Defense attorneys also noted that two people at the party who aren’t on the lacrosse team weren’t included in the photos shown to the woman. Those two people also have never submitted DNA samples to authorities for testing, attorneys said.
[…]
In recent days, photos taken at the party have been released, showing the woman smiling as she left the off-campus house where the party took place and establishing a timeline in which the attorneys said it would have been difficult for an assault to have occurred.
The attorneys also said they have ATM receipts, the recollection of a cab driver and other evidence to show that Seligmann and Finnerty weren’t at the party when the rape allegedly took place.
Via Hannity & Colmes, watch the hate:
(Thanks to Empires Fall.)
ADDED —
In a comment below, “mAcChaos” links to this report in the New York Times, which reads in part:
In the past few months, nine states, including Oklahoma, Wisconsin and Indiana, have approved laws that restrict demonstrations at a funeral or burial. In addition, 23 state legislatures are getting ready to vote on similar bills, and Congress, which has received thousands of e-mail messages on the issue, expects to take up legislation in May dealing with demonstrations at federal cemeteries.
“mAcChaos” asks what I think of this: “Is it a common sense restriction or an inappropriate infringement on our First Amendment rights?”
I think the answer turns on the particulars of a given statute. Since I haven’t read any of the bills or statutes to which the Times refers, I can’t comment on them. But as a general proposition, I doubt the ratifiers of the First Amendment would have understood it to prevent state-level regulation of the sort of obscenity Fred Phelps and his relatives engage in. But that’s just my opinion; it’s not the law. For an informative overview of extant First Amendment law as it might relate to restrictions on funeral protests, see this article by Professor Eugene Volokh.
No, not in 2008. Right now:
Republicans are urging President George W Bush to dump Dick Cheney as vice-president and replace him with Condoleezza Rice if he is serious about presenting a new face to the jaded American public.
My own hunch is that questions about her private life — she is now, and always has been, single — are what keep Ms. Rice from running for president. (The media will grant to a cabinet officer a degree of privacy they won’t grant to a presidential aspirant.) But maybe two years of having an unmarried woman in the vice presidential mansion will acclimate Americans to having one in the White House. Or am I just pipe dreaming?
The Democrats don’t have a message or a messenger.
To make the kind of gains Gingrich & Co. made in 1994, Democrats have to nationalize the November midterms. But there’s a problem: they’re short on ideas, talent and cash, which is only everything they need to win.
Of the probable 2008 GOP presidential candidates, which is to say not Condi Rice or Rudy Giuliani, I’m sweet on Sen. George Allen: “Unless [they’re] harming someone else, you leave people free.”
Alas, it’s just not true. Republicans should have to worry, but they don’t have to worry. As even Charlie Cook admits (at link above), it’s nigh impossible to see — in view of gerrymandering and the other advantages of incumbency — how Democrats can muster enough House seats to retake the majority.
The midterms are still months away, but for now it’s reasonable to expect that Republicans will hold their losses to five or fewer seats. Democrats need 15.
The Democrats’ prospects are brighter in the Senate — you can go ahead and color Pennsylvania and Montana blue — but even there it’s hard to imagine them gaining the six seats they need for organizational control. (Keep in mind that even if the post-election Senate splits 50-50, Republicans will still be in charge as long as Dick Cheney is vice president.)
As a Republican I am, ironically, discouraged by the uphill struggle the Democrats face. My party has governed wretchedly, and it needs — it deserves — a first-class shellacking from the voters. We Republicans have lost our soul. Defeat might put us on the road to finding it.
Daniel Henninger on the South Park features of blogging:
Intense language like this used to be confined to construction sites and corner bars. Now it is normal discourse on Web sites, the most popular forums for political discussion. Much of this is new. Politics is a social endeavor. The Web is nothing if not “social.” But the blogosphere is also the product not of people meeting, but venting alone at a keyboard with all the uninhibited, bat-out-of-hell hyperbole of thinking, suggestion and expression that this new technology seems to release.
Actually, I don’t think it is new. People have been exhibiting socially disinhibited behavior for years from the cocoon of their automobiles. If you want examples of vulgarity, you certainly will find them on the Web. But you’ll also find them on the freeway during rush hour. Or in the stands at a sporting event. Barriers, whether physical or virtual, allow people to disregard social convention.
I was most recently given the bird on Houston’s Southwest Freeway by an apparently middle-class, middle-aged, well-coiffed woman who, I’m certain, would have held her finger in check had she and I not been separated by two tons of steel.
It’s not the first time, and it won’t be the last. The assault is coming from the Left and from the Right.
Today, your enemies. Tomorrow, you.
Am I the only one who has gone from thinking “the defendants are presumed innocent unless proven otherwise” to “the defendants are definitely innocent and the Government is attempting to frame them”?
Two Houston men were arrested Wednesday for hiring undocumented workers at a shipping and supply manufacturing plant and hundreds of the company’s employees were taken into custody during an immigration raid that spanned nine states.
Abelino “Lino”’ Chicas, 40, the assistant general manager of the Houston West IFCO Systems plant and James Rice, 36, a former IFCO regional general manager, were charged with conspiring to transport, harbor, and encourage undocumented workers to reside in the United States for commercial advantage and private financial gain.
If convicted, they each face up to 10 years in prison.
[…]
The arrests were made after a year long investigation …
Meanwhile, get a load of this twaddle:
The year-long investigation did little to allay the suspicion and fears of many involved in the nascent pro-immigrant movement.
“This is a scare tactic,” said Angela Mejia, a union organizer who helped orchestrate the April 10 march. “We haven’t had raids for a very long, long time.
“It’s a sad thing if we have raids by the government to stop people from expressing their freedom of speech.”
Say what?
Give the man credit. This is smart.
The Transportation Security Administration bagged a terrorist in Los Angeles International Airport Tuesday, or so they thought. Daniel Brown’s name came up on their no-fly watchlist, so they dragged him into interrogation and grilled him, despite the protestations of Brown and his fellow travelers, who swore they could vouch for him.
The others in Brown’s party went on their Northwest Airlines flight to Minneapolis-St. Paul, where they waited on a bus at the airport. You see, the detained man was Staff Sergeant Daniel Brown, USMC Reserve, and he was traveling with the other members of his Marine Reserve Military Police unit, which was heading home to Minnesota from eight months of combat in Iraq. The Marines were in full uniform and all, including Brown, had travel orders and military identification cards.
After attempts to stonewall under claims of “security,” TSA spokesmen finally admitted that Staff Sergeant Daniel Brown was placed on the no-fly list, and ultimately detained, because they had detected gunpowder on his footgear — not on this flight, but on a prior flight, which earned Brown a permanent place on the TSA’s mysterious terrorist lists.
The footgear that had been exposed to gunpowder? Brown’s combat boots, and the occasion of that flight was after his return from his first combat tour in Iraq.
I’m reminded of the observation of an Israeli general (whose name I forget). The general said, “The United States doesn’t have a homeland security system. It has a sytem for bothering people.”
(Thanks to Argghhh!!!.)
Apparently deadlocked and needing the vote of its newest member to resolve the impasse, the U.S. Supreme Court today ordered rehearing in Hudson v. Michigan. The case presents this question: should evidence from an unconstitutional “no-knock” raid be suppressed at trial, or does the inevitable discovery doctrine make it admissible?
Radley Balko has the backstory:
In Hudson, police in Michigan knocked and announced themselves, but waited just 3 to 5 seconds before breaking into the home of Booker T. Hudson. Once inside, they found a substantial amount of cocaine and charged Hudson with various drug crimes. When a trial court found the wait time insufficient to satisfy the knock-and-announce requirement, Hudson moved to have the evidence suppressed.
The case eventually reached the Michigan Supreme Court, which ruled that suppressing the evidence seized in the raid wasn’t a proper remedy for police violating the knock-and-announce rule, and cited the inevitable discovery doctrine: Because police had an otherwise valid search warrant, their failure to announce was inconsequential. They would have found the drugs anyway.
Hudson was heard, but not decided, while Sandra Day O’Connor was still on the Court. The Associated Press surmises that she would have provided the fifth vote against the police. Justice Samuel Alito will, I predict, provide the fifth vote for them, which is unfortunate. As Radley notes:
… the exclusionary rule’s primary purpose is to serve as a deterrent against Fourth Amendment violations. If police know that breaking a particular Fourth Amendment protection will result in the suppression of any evidence they find, there’s strong incentive for them to follow the law.
The Court has not set a date for rehearing.
Arkansas Razorback players Clarke Moore, Brett Goode and Casey Dick.
(Thanks to the reader who sent it.)
BBC News:
Coca production in Colombia is more widespread than previously registered, the US government says. A survey found efforts to kill the crop - the source for cocaine - by spraying fields with chemicals had succeeded.
But the US government, expanding the survey area, found an extra 26% of land under cultivation. It also found production was more dispersed.
Correspondents say this is a setback for the US. It has spent $4bn fighting Colombia’s cocaine trade since 2000.
The BBC’s Jeremy McDermott in Colombia says US policy appears to be failing, with cocaine yields improving, demand in the US remaining steady, and a more liberal approach to coca cultivation in Bolivia and Peru. (Link)
In other words, the Government succeeded in moving the coca production, not in eliminating it. After expanding the survey area, it discovered the error of its assumption.
Need I even tell you what the Government plans to do now? You guess it. Same song, next verse.
(Thanks to PoliBlog.)
Reuters:
WASHINGTON — The Republican Party is in serious danger of losing political ground in November elections if it does not enact reforms that eliminate waste and hold the federal bureaucracy to higher standards, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said on Sunday.
“I think they’re in very serious danger of having a very bad election this fall,” Gingrich said on Fox News Sunday.
“You have to respect the right of the American people to say they want change,” he said, criticizing the federal government’s bungled efforts to cope with Hurricane Katrina and the Republican-led Congress’ failure to enact immigration reforms.
“Are they going to learn some lessons and get their act together?” Gingrich asked.
Republicans currently outnumber Democrats 231-201 in the House and have a 55-44 advantage in the Senate.
The former representative from Georgia said the “debacle” over measures to strengthen U.S. borders and create a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants “was one more piece of the puzzle” for many voters who have lost faith in Republican leadership.
“The country absolutely wants control of the borders,” Gingrich said. “The country absolutely wants us to insist that becoming an American citizen requires that you passed a test in English.”
A well-designed guest worker program would have the support of 75 percent to 80 percent of the American people, he said.
With the federal budget deficit at record levels, Gingrich said Americans are losing patience with “pork,” the discretionary spending earmarked to benefit local political constituencies.
“We were sent here to reform Washington, not to be co-opted by Washington,” he said.
Amir Taheri, former editor of Iran’s largest daily newspaper:
… [Ahmadinejad] boasts that the Imam gave him the presidency for a single task: provoking a “clash of civilisations” in which the Muslim world, led by Iran, takes on the “infidel” West, led by the United States, and defeats it in a slow but prolonged contest that, in military jargon, sounds like a low intensity, asymmetrical war.
In Ahmadinejad’s analysis, the rising Islamic “superpower” has decisive advantages over the infidel. Islam has four times as many young men of fighting age as the West, with its ageing populations. Hundreds of millions of Muslim “ghazis” (holy raiders) are keen to become martyrs while the infidel youths, loving life and fearing death, hate to fight. Islam also has four-fifths of the world’s oil reserves, and so controls the lifeblood of the infidel. More importantly, the US, the only infidel power still capable of fighting, is hated by most other nations.
According to this analysis, spelled out in commentaries by Ahmadinejad’s strategic guru, Hassan Abassi, known as the “Dr Kissinger of Islam”, President George W Bush is an aberration, an exception to a rule under which all American presidents since Truman, when faced with serious setbacks abroad, have “run away”. Iran’s current strategy, therefore, is to wait Bush out. And that, by “divine coincidence”, corresponds to the time Iran needs to develop its nuclear arsenal, thus matching the only advantage that the infidel enjoys.
Twelve days remain until the U.N. Security Council’s “deadline” that Iran stop its uranium enrichment program. Taheri says we should expect Ahmadinejad to announce “a ‘temporary suspension’ of uranium enrichment as a ‘confidence building measure:’”
Also, don’t be surprised if some time in June he agrees to ask the Majlis (the Islamic parliament) to consider signing the additional protocols of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT).
Such manoeuvres would allow the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director, Muhammad El-Baradei, and Britain’s Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, to congratulate Iran for its “positive gestures” and denounce talk of sanctions, let alone military action. The confidence building measures would never amount to anything, but their announcement would be enough to prevent the G8 summit, hosted by Russia in July, from moving against Iran.
If Taheri is right, we ought to give Ahmadinejad credit: he understands American politics and international diplomacy. Advantage: Ahmadinejad.
Heh:
At a closed meeting of conservatives last week in Washington, D.C., a Bush representative tried to deny that the president is advocating amnesty, but a participant retorted, “His dispute is not with us; it’s with the dictionary.” The comment “We don’t believe the President anymore” elicited spontaneous applause.
(Thanks to Polipundit.)
George F. Will:
If in November Republicans lose control of the House of Representatives, April 5 should be remembered as the day they demonstrated that they earned defeat. Traducing the Constitution and disgracing conservatism, they used their power for their only remaining purpose — to cling to power. Their vote to restrict freedom of speech came just as the GOP’s conservative base is coming to the conclusion that House Republicans are not worth working for in October or venturing out to vote for in November.
My fellow Republicans, it’s time for us to go home.
ADDED —
Ed Morrissey offers this (unpersuasive) defense of the House Republicans:
Will puts the blame on Republicans for attempting to fix a broken system so that it works less badly, and does so unfairly. After the BCRA slapped restrictions on speech and extended our Byzantine system of classifying money in manners that only lawyers could love, Congress left open a large loophole through which cash could pour into supposedly independent organizations with no accountability whatsoever.
In other words, Ed, your answer is, as George Will put it, that you now “[favor] dictating to 527 contributors because McCain-Feingold is not violating the First Amendment enough”?
If the Republican Party is to reform itself and rediscover its roots, several things have to happen. One of those things is that GOP bloggers must stop making excuses for the party’s betrayal of principle.
U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA):
We must push for a complete halt to Iran’s enrichment activities and full access to all nuclear sites by the International Atomic Energy Agency. If Iran refuses, international sanctions should follow, and inspections with U.N. forces if necessary.
At the same time, the U.S. needs to build international alliances to create a unified front opposed to Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons. (Link)
So we must “push” Iran to stop enriching uranium. Okay. But what, exactly, does that mean? What would our “push” look like? And if, despite our undefined pushing (and even difficult-to-enforce international sanctions), Iran refuses to stop enriching uranium, then what? Send in U.N. inspectors, she says. And if Iran refuses the inspectors? Or allows them in, only to lead them around like a bottom in a leather bar?
In the meantime, the senator says, the U.S. should join other countries in creating “a unified front” in opposition to Iran’s quest for the bomb. Unified in what? In our rhetoric? Is that what we need, senator? To just get ‘em told?
I wonder whether it ever occurs to Sen. Feinstein and her ilk to ascribe to America’s enemies even a fraction of the malevolence they ascribe to our own president. What if Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the sort of man the Left thinks George W. Bush is: an evil bastard hell-bent on his dark ways? If so, what implications might that have for Sen. Feinstein’s ill-defined, talk-based approach? Can you chat down the devil?
(For the editorial cartoons, thanks to Cox & Forkum.)
Once again, Scalia’s the talk of the town
Washington Post
Here’s the video, to which the article refers, of Justice Scalia’s remarks in Switzerland. (Requires Windows Media Player.) Especially near the end, he becomes quite feisty.
Of one of the Court’s most controversial cases, Bush v. Gore, Justice Scalia said: “To fully appreciate the Florida case, you have to read the opinion of the Florida Supreme Court. There was indeed a politically motivated court involved in this, but it wasn’t mine.” More:
It was the Democrats who wanted the courts to decide the question. They brought it into court. So the question, ultimately, was whether the election of the president of the United States was going to be decided by the Florida Supreme Court or by the Supreme Court of the United States. That seems to me not a very hard question.
[…]
The basis on which we decided the case was the Equal Protection Clause. And on that issue, the case was not even close. Seven of the nine justices agreed that what was being done in Florida … they were all doing it differently. Seven of the nine agreed that violated the Equal Protection Clause. The only point on which we were in disagreement, the only point on which we were 5 to 4, was whether, having waited something like three weeks and looking like idiots — the greatest democracy in the world can’t run an election and we couldn’t have a transition team in Washington to take over — should we give the Florida court another two weeks to straighten it all out? That was the only point on which we disagreed. And five of us said, “No, enough is enough. Let’s put an end to it.”
Social issues top GOP pre-election agenda
Associated Press:
WASHINGTON — Protection of marriage amendment? Check. Anti-flag burning legislation? Check. New abortion limits? Check.
Between now and the November elections, Republicans are penciling in plans to take action on social issues important to religious conservatives, the foundation of the GOP base, as they defend their congressional majority.
Meanwhile …
Growth in federal spending unchecked
USA Today:
WASHINGTON — Federal spending is outstripping economic growth at a rate unseen in more than half a century, provoking some conservatives to complain that government under Republican control has gotten too big. The federal government is currently spending 20.8 cents of every $1 the economy generates, up from 18.5 cents in 2001, White House budget documents show. That’s the most rapid growth during one administration since Franklin Roosevelt.
There are no signs that the trend is about to turn around. The House Budget Committee last week rejected a proposal that would require spending hikes to be offset by cuts in other spending or by tax increases.
Lincoln Chafee is one of them. Let him burn.
Looking for novel, money-saving solutions to the problem of illegal immigration? End subsidies to agribusiness.
Bill Quick offers a pictorial warning to the Iranians. It’s funny, as things often are when they have a ring of truth to them.
Wow. Motor over and get it while it’s hot.