John Tillman, CEO of the Illinois Policy Institute, offers his thoughts on the GOP spat over Christine O’Donnell’s victory in Delaware. It’s a refreshing read.

Tuesday night, I happened to be watching live when Karl Rove fulminated on the Christine O’Donnell win in the Delaware GOP Senate primary.  You can see the full video here but I’ve provided a transcript (from Fox News) of some of the key passages below.  Among the things Rove said:

• “This is the inexplicable (emphasis added) one because Christine O’Donnell has come on here at the — very end of the campaign. There’s a huge turnout tonight in Delaware. The total was estimated to be 30,000 people going into the primary and has come out 56,000. She has dealt a defeat to one of the state’s longest, best-known, thought to be most-beloved political figures, a former governor and nine-term Republican Congressman in Mike Castle.”
• “One thing that Christine O’Donnell is now going to have to answer in the general election that she didn’t have to answer in the primary is her own checkered background….I’ve met her. I got to tell you, I wasn’t frankly impressed as her abilities as a candidate.”
• “And again, these serious questions about how does she make her living? Why did she mislead voters about her college education? How come it took nearly two decades to pay her college bills so she could get her college degree? How did she make a living? Why did she sue a well-known and well thought of conservative think tank?”

Here’s what Rove should have said:

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We’re all about the mid-terms this week and we’re joined by one of the country’s foremost campaign experts to help us sort through them: National Review’s Jim Gergaghty. We cover Delaware, the infamous Murphy post, and a host of other contests around the country. We also politely discuss the Ricochet Code of Conduct and how it is enforced. Or not enforced.

For links discussed in the episode, or to comment directly to the hosts, join the conversation at Ricochet.com.

Would you vote to cut taxes only for the middle-class, if that were your only choice?  Who says it’s your only choice?  It’s time to place the blame on those who try to box people in.

The furor over the tax cut answer given by House Republican Leader John Boehner (R, OH) obscures the fact that it’s a tough question–one for which all politicians should have a response ready before it’s asked.

Reporters want to push them onto the horns of a supposed dilemma:  either disavow across-the-board tax cuts or be labeled a toady for the rich.  Or dodge the question and get depicted as a weasel.

The better approach is to challenge the very premise of the question.  Who is trying to force a decision between bad alternatives?  It’s known as a “Sophie’s Choice”–from the Meryl Streep portrayal of a mother cruelly forced by Nazi’s to choose only one of her children to save from a death camp.

America’s economy is hurting, but must President Obama and his team of class warriors insist that some can be saved from January’s automatic tax hikes but others must not be?

Examples abound that Obama’s selective approach hurts the very group that creates the jobs we need; the entrepreneurs who are holding back from expanding and creating jobs due to Obama’s impending higher taxes and heavier regulations; the 5 per cent who are credited with 37 per cent of consumer spending.  As The Wall Street Journal reports, “According to new research from Moody’s Analytics, the top 5% of Americans by income account for 37% of all consumer outlays.”

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The U.S. government classifies marijuana—along with heroin and LSD—as a Schedule I drug, the most tightly restricted category of drugs in the United States. According to the federal government, Schedule I drugs are unsafe and have “no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.”

Really?

As medical marijuana proponents have pointed out since the Controlled Substances Act was passed by Congress in 1970, cannabis has been used medicinally for thousands of years, and there has never been a reported case of a marijuana overdose. Moreover, in recent years clinical researchers around the world have demonstrated the medicinal value of cannabis.

We talked to a doctor, a pharmacist, and a patient to get three firsthand perspectives on medical cannabis. Special thanks to Dr. Donald Abrams, JoAnna LaForce and Don Grubbs.

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In addition to 2010 clearly being the Year of the Tea Party, a good sub-headline is the Year of the Sore Loser.  The Republican establishment elites are angry because they keep losing campaigns.  The latest example of a “Sore Loser” phenomena sweeping the country is in Alaska where Senator Lisa Murkowski (?-AK) is working on a desperation write in campaign for her seat in the Senate.  Murkowski joins Congressman Mike Castle (R-DE), Senator Robert Bennett (R-UT), Senator Arlen Specter (D-PA) and Governor Charlie Crist (I-FL) as politicians who just can’t accept the fact that the Republican Party has changed and they are not part of that change.

Ground Zero for sore losers today is in the state of Alaska.  Joe Miller beat sitting Senator Murkowski in a primary a few weeks ago and the Anchorage Daily News is reporting that Lisa Murkowski is planning on running a write-in campaign for her seat.  This is yet another example of an incumbent or party endorsed candidate not honorably dealing with a loss in a Republican primary.

Adn.com reports that:

A video showing protesters outside an Americans For Prosperity event has surfaced on the internet.  It shows the protestors with signs depicting Sarah Palin and Glenn beck with Hitler mustaches and the label “Naz-Tea Party” over their pictures.  Also depicted as Hitler is GOP candidate Adam Kinzinger running against Rep. Debbie Halvorson (IL-D) in the 11th District in Illinois.

As protests go, it’s a bit limp and poorly attended, but the offensive and inflammatory signs certainly grab your attention.  Especially considering the Democratic Party and the NAACP’s very high-profile condemnation of inflammatory signs that have appeared at Tea Party events.

What makes this video so compelling is what it shows after the protest. (more…)

Reform of public schools in the District of Columbia is the biggest victim of the recent city election.  Mayor Adrian Fenty fell victim to Vincent Gray – and $1 million in spending by the American Federation of Teachers.

The biggest winner in the election was not Gray, but rather Randi Weingarten, president of the AFT, the teachers’ union that represents DC school employees.

The school chancellor, Michelle Rhee, was appointed by Fenty and was aggressive at reforming the district that had been spending the most per student but achieving some of the worst results in the nation.  She had pushed for eliminating ineffective teachers, rewarding the good ones and holding the adults more accountable for student outcomes.

All of Rhee’s efforts turned Weingarten’s stomach.  So, like a typical labor boss, she decided the problem – Rhee – had to be dealt with, which meant Rhee’s  boss – Fenty – needed to go.

Politico reported that the AFT gave $1 million “to a labor-backed independent expenditure campaign” that supported Gray’s candidacy.

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Mary Curtis at PoliticsDaily:

Though it may be a mix-up or a misunderstanding, it doesn’t look good. On the tape, Norton notes that colleagues on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee have already received donations. “I’m handling the largest economic development project in the United States now,” she says. “I’m simply candidly calling to ask for a contribution.” She then helpfully supplies an address.

The call could be examined to see if it breaks House ethics rules, and could not come at a worse time for Democrats trying to maintain their majority in the House and Senate in November midterm elections. Ethics violations by Republicans helped get Democrats elected in the last two election cycles when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi vowed to “drain the swamp.”

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Traveling on Amtrak’s Texas Eagle from Chicago to St. Louis on November 10 will set you back $24. More, if you want to ride in a first class sleeper car compartment. Add $136 for a superliner roomette, $217 for a family bedroom, and $260 for a superliner bedroom.

But there’s a big problem. Even with higher charges, taxpayers are subsidizing first class sleeper service.

Amtrak’s Sleeper service comes with some nice perks. Beds to stretch out in, sometimes a private bathroom (no having to share the gross public toilet). Some rooms even come with a shower. On top of that:

Sleeping car passengers are entitled to a range of hotel-like amenities, including fresh linen and towel service, complimentary bottled water and daily newspapers.

A new Waste Action Alert details how cutting federal subsidies for first class sleeper car service on Amtrak could save up to $1.2 billion over ten years.

Why the spending is wasteful:

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So much for GM’s self-imposed ban on political contributions. According to The Washington Post:

General Motors reported making $47,000 in contributions to lawmakers and congressional candidates in July, the first it has made since November 2008. The company stopped giving through its political action committee just as it began to seek government assistance to stay in business.

The U.S. government provided support but also steered the company through bankruptcy. Today, the Treasury owns a 60 percent stake in the company, which recently announced plans to go public with a stock sale.

GM earlier gave $41,000 to groups and causes associated with lawmakers. The latest contributions were made directly to lawmakers’ campaigns.

The Post notes the fact that GM is spreading the wealth around to both political parties: $26,000 to Republicans and $21,000 to Democrats. Below is the list of GM PAC recipients from the Federal Election Commission:

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Two weeks ago the U.K. Guardian gleefully reported that the self-proclaimed “skeptical environmentalist” Bjorn Lomborg, the best-selling writer on the environment, professor, and director of the Copenhagen Consensus think tank, had made a serious acquiescence to the global warming climate change global climate disruption movement that could quite possibly change the face of the entire conversation. From the article:

The world’s most high-profile climate change sceptic is to declare that global warming is “undoubtedly one of the chief concerns facing the world today” and “a challenge humanity must confront”, in an apparent U-turn that will give a huge boost to the embattled environmental lobby.

Bjørn Lomborg, the self-styled “sceptical environmentalist” once compared to Adolf Hitler by the UN’s climate chief, is famous for attacking climate scientists, campaigners, the media and others for exaggerating the rate of global warming and its effects on humans, and the costly waste of policies to stop the problem.

But in a new book to be published next month, Lomborg will call for tens of billions of dollars a year to be invested in tackling climate change. “Investing $100bn annually would mean that we could essentially resolve the climate change problem by the end of this century,” the book concludes.

Lomborg has a unique voice in the climate change debate because while he has always believed in man-made climate change, he doesn’t believe it’s catastrophic nor does he subscribe to the Leonardo DiCaprio/Laurie David school of thought that massive cut backs in carbon emissions is the one and only way to fix the problem. So a “U-turn” from this stance would mean that after years of studying and writing on the matter, he’s all of a sudden become an Inconvenient Truther. Having met Mr. Lomborg just last year and being a fan of his work, this report made me highly… skeptical. (more…)

The indiscreet voicemail, left by Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) for a lobbyist, sounded a bit like a “shakedown”, which is no big surprise.

I know from first-hand experience that Ms. Norton can use veiled threats and thuggish behavior when she wants to have her way.

During my time as the Administrator of the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), I was the recipient of late night phone calls at my home, during which Holmes wanted to “discuss” why GSA wasn’t doing more to house government agencies in certain parts of the District of Columbia, in particular, in areas where gentrification was occurring slowly.

Norton’s voracious appetite for “more” often led her to raise her voice and make veiled threats.  Once, she even trumped up a meeting where she advocated for more business on behalf of a real estate organization that I later learned had donated to her campaign.  When I protested these tactics and refused to attend further such meetings, the political pressure was cranked up and political unpleasantness became the norm.  Norton always claimed she was just doing her job.

Many Americans may be shocked to hear Holmes’ indiscreet voicemail, but, from my experiences in Washington, it seems that Holmes may have learned these tactics from the top leadership of her party.  Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL), the Majority Whip, has been especially thuggish in the past, screaming and issuing threats at the homes of federal agency leaders, should one of his pork projects be questioned.

The “gimme”, as practiced by some Democrat legislators, can range from subtle and respectful, as is probably appropriate for any request, to disrespectful and threatening.  It seems as if there are some legislators who want to make sure there is no doubt in your mind that if you don’t cough up the goods during the shakedown, then negative consequences will occur.

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Today marks Constitution Day. On 17 September 1787, in Philadelphia, the Framers of the American Constitution added their signatures to the document they had produced, and soon thereafter it was dispatched to the Continental Congress for consideration by the states. On this day, it is appropriate that we, their heirs, reconsider their handiwork and ask whether ours is still a constitutional government.

In their deliberations, the Framers confronted one great question, and it was largely on this question that the debate between the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists during the ratification period turned. Can one establish an enduring republic on an extended territory? This is the question that Americans in this crucial period wrestled with.

As I have argued in earlier posts here and here and, in much greater detail, in my recent books Montesquieu and the Logic of Liberty and Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift, the Americans had reason to worry. In the late eighteenth century, it was almost universally agreed that what they were attempting could not succeed. Such was the argument that Montesquieu advanced in the first part of his authoritative book The Spirit of Laws, and he had grounds for advancing such a claim. Athens and Sparta were situated on territories of no great size, and the same could be said for early Rome and for Lucca, Florence, and Venice in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

Of course, late republican Rome was an exception to the rule. Under the late republic, nearly everyone in Italy was a citizen, and that polity ruled the Mediterranean and beyond. But – as both Machiavelli in his Discourses on Livy and Montesquieu in his Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and their Decline and Spirit of Laws had pointed out — Rome was also the exception that proved the rule. It was a small republic that, by dint of conquest, came to be situated on an extended territory; and soon after it had expanded, it collapsed. The Framers of the American constitution faced a great challenge, and this they and their opponents among the Anti-Federalists knew all too well.

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Today, in 1787, the US Constitution was signed in Philadelphia. Over two hundred years later, elected officials no longer care. Hopefully, we can right this ship in November.

Tonight, Delegate (or in her self-absorbed world, Congresswoman) Eleanor Holmes Norton responded to reports that she put the squeeze on a lobbyist. Of course, she tried to change the subject:

The conservative blogger, Andrew Breitbart, best known for his misinformation concerning Shirley Sherrod, is trying to mislead again. He is circulating a voice mail of a standard request made by candidates to potential donors who do not know the candidates or their work. Norton, therefore, identified herself as a subcommittee chair and the kind of work she has done in subcommittee. Norton is a longtime supporter of public financing of campaigns, but barring that, candidates from all parties regularly raise funds in calls by first identifying who they are and what they have done. The call was made from campaign headquarters. Her request fully complied with legal and ethical requirements.”

Go here to see if her voicemail was a “standard request.”

Of course, this isn’t Eleanor Holmes Norton’s first brush with possible ethics’ violations. In fact, her first election for Congress was almost derailed by the revelation that she and her husband had decided not to pay DC income tax for seven years.

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Tax hikes on the oil and gas industry being pursued by the Obama administration will have a crippling effect on the U.S. economy, says a new report by professor Joseph Mason of Louisiana State University.

In the study published earlier this week, the economics professor found that President Obama’s proposal in the 2011 budget to repeal tax credits for oil and gas companies will trigger “extensive economic losses” over the next 10 years.

If enacted, the plan could reduce economic output by nearly $341 billion, slash more than 154,000 jobs in 2011 and cut wages by $68 billion. Each year the Obama tax policies are in place, the study says, they would also hemorrhage an additional 115,000 jobs, many of them in the unrelated fields of healthcare and manufacturing.

Obama’s budget proposal calls for rollbacks on two types of tax credits, one under Section 199 of the U.S. tax code, which grants companies the ability to write off 6 percent of their revenue from oil and gas production from their tax liability. This proposal was struck down in a 56-42 cloture vote in the Senate Tuesday.

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