The Des Moines Register, which is widely considered one of very best indicators of how the results of the Iowa caucuses will turn out, has released their final Republican primary poll.  The race is still up for grabs, with Mitt Romney clinging to a narrow lead over Ron Paul.  Yet, the most compelling storyline of this last weekend before the primary continues to be Rick Santorum, who has gone “all in” in Iowa and surged in the poll. He needs a great result Tuesday to jump-start a campaign that has yet to catch on nationally.

The poll, conducted Tuesday through Friday, shows support at 24 percent for Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts; 22 percent for Paul, a Texas congressman; and 15 percent for the surging Rick Santorum, a former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania.

But the four-day results don’t reflect just how quickly momentum is shifting in a race that has remained highly fluid for months. If the final two days of polling are considered separately, Santorum rises to second place, with 21 percent, pushing Paul to third, at 18 percent. Romney remains the same, at 24 percent.

“Momentum’s name is Rick Santorum,” said the Register’s pollster, J. Ann Selzer.

Another sign of the race’s volatility: 41 percent of likely caucusgoers say they could still be persuaded to change their minds.

Selzer & Co. of Des Moines conducted the poll of 602 likely Republican caucusgoers, which has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points. In the final two days of polling, 302 likely caucusgoers were interviewed, with a margin of error of plus or minus 5.6 percentage points.

Rounding out the field, in results from the full, four-day poll: former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich, 12 percent, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, 11 percent, and Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, 7 percent.

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We were so full of “hope” for “change.” No, I am not talking about the election of Barack Obama, one of the most effective Progressive presidents in American history. I am speaking of the excitement felt within the Conservative, Libertarian and Center Right and Left political communities after the 2010 election delivered the House and a non-filibuster proof Senate to the American people. Finally, most of us thought, some balance in the federal government. Maybe, just maybe, the Progressives and Liberal Democrats in federal government would be forced to the table of true and honest compromise; compromise fitting of a truly free people. But, as we look back over the year, what did we really get for all that so-called “compromise?”

With Republicans in control of the US House of Representatives, the body where – by the mandate of the US Constitution – all legislation relating to revenue is to begin, many on the Right and in the Center believed that the reckless and spendthrift fiscal actions of the 111th Congress would be constrained if not reversed. With a sizable number of new members identifying with the oft demonized TEA Party, there was high hope for a glimmer of fiscal sanity to emerge from the halls of Congress. And while the TEA Party members of Congress are to be congratulated for doing exactly what their constituents sent them to Washington to do, in the end, they were thwarted by establishment, inside the beltway Republicans and the despotic obstructionism foisted upon them by Senate Majority leader Harry Reid, D-NV, (to be fair, Reid was aided by a less than reform-minded Republican leadership in the senate, led by Mitch McConnell, R-KY).

The Budget
In absolute defiance of the fact that it is law that Congress must pass an annual budget for the federal government, Senate Democrats – once again, led by the indignant political disgrace that is Harry Reid – refused to abide by said law in passing, reconciling and advancing to the President an annual budget. It has been over 900 days – almost three years – since the last budget has been presented to the President for his signature or veto.

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Sydney Volanski, a 15-year-old who left the Girl Scouts of the USA and spoke out over the group directing the young members to liberal media group Media Matters for America, appeared on Fox and Friends to talk about the ordeal.

Sydney says the organization also promoted Planned Parenthood and abortion advocacy. In response she started a website, Speak Now: Girl Scouts, with the goal of exposing liberal bias within the Girl Scouts.

“Media”, the book given to the young girls which encouraged them to visit MMFA, is a publication made for those in grades six through eight that shows how they should process and understand the media messages around them. (more…)

For college football fans, the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, CA is sacred ground. “The Granddady” of the college football tournament games, it has been played every year since 1902.

The accompanying parade, the Rose Parade, predates the game, dating way back to 1890. It’s a tradition that normally goes off without a hitch–that is, until this year, when “Occupy the Rose Parade” has decided to disrupt the festivities.

Peter Thottam, right

Led by Peter Thottam, who we will return to in a moment, the Occupy the Rose Parade activists will follow the long parade with their own demonstration. It won’t be the first time that Thottam has tried to disrupt the parade.

In 2008, he–along with supporters from the Los Angeles National Impeachment Center–worked with Cindy Sheehan, Code Pink, and Iraq Veterans Against the War to try to make a statement about impeaching Bush and Cheney.

But this year, Thottam obtained approval for a protest to follow the parade. At the parade’s conclusion, his group plans to pilot an “Octupy Octupus,” a puppet made from recycled plastic bags and bamboo that takes 40 people to operate. The organizers say that the puppet symbolizes Wall Street’s tentacles, strangling American politics.

To prepare for the Occupiers, who will include Sheehan and filmmaker Michael Moore, the City of Pasadena had to double its police presence to deal with the supposedly peaceful protestors.

Thottam makes clear that his beef is with the parade, not the game. “A total of nine floats are underwritten by banks. We believe the parade has not only been corporatized but militarized,” Thottam told the local press. (more…)

From the Associated Press:

Obama’s election year retreat from legislative fights means this term will end without significant progress on two of his 2008 campaign promises, an immigration overhaul and closing the military prison for terrorist suspects atGuantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Presidential directives probably won’t make a big dent in the nation’s 8.6 percent unemployment rate or lead to significant improvements in the economy. That’s the chief concern for many voters and the issue on which Republican candidates are most likely to criticize Obama.

In focusing on executive actions rather than ambitious legislation, the president risks appearing to be putting election-year strategy ahead of economic action at a time when millions of Americans are still out of work.

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From The Charlotte Observer:

An Occupy Charlotte member who was jailed after helping burn two U.S. flags told other members late Friday that while he’s sorry for the trouble it may have caused the movement, he’s not sorry for what he did.

“Those were actions taken on my own behalf,” Alex Tyler said at a camp meeting. “I did it to display my utter contempt for American greed, not (the military).”

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Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, today released its 2011 list of Washington’s “Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians.” The members of the Obama Administration on the list, in alphabetical order, include:

• Attorney General Eric Holder
• President Barack Obama

Dishonorable Mentions for 2011 include:

• Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano
• Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius

Attorney General Eric Holder: Attorney General Eric Holder now operates the most politicized and ideological Department of Justice (DOJ) in recent history. And revelations from the Operation Fast and Furious scandal suggest that programs approved by the Holder DOJ may have resulted in the needless deaths of many, including a federal law enforcement officer.

Fast and Furious was a DOJ/Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) “gun-running” operation in which guns were sold to Mexican drug cartels and others, apparently in hopes that the guns would end up at crime scenes. This reckless insanity seems to have resulted in, among other crimes, the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, who was killed in a shootout with Mexican criminals in December 2010. Fast and Furious guns were found at the scene of his death.

The Fast and Furious operation by itself should have resulted in Holder’s resignation, but it is the cover-up that has prompted serious calls for Holder’s ouster. (more…)

The 25 richest members of Congress and the 25 “poorest” members of Congress break fairly evenly along partisan lines, according to an analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics.

Of the top 25 wealthiest members of Congress, 13 were Republicans and 12 were Democrats.

As for the “poorest” members of Congress, 10 were Republicans and 15 were Democrats.

The findings, which were based on the lawmakers’ 2010 financial disclosures, list Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-FL) as having a net worth of – $4,732,002, making him the poorest member of Congress.

At the opposite end of the financial spectrum is Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) whose listed net worth of $448,125,017 puts him at the top of the Congressional wealth chart.

Recent studies have shown that the wealth gap between elected officials and average Americans has widened considerably in recent years.

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Thankfully, 2011 ends today. No telling if 2012 will be any better.

Big Government has obtained a photograph of House Minority Leader and Occupy Wall Street enthusiast Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) with her husband Paul at an exclusive, $10,000-per-night Hawaiian resort.

In her day job, Leader Pelosi spends a lot of time worrying about ‘income inequality.’ She was one of the first national Democrat leaders to embrace the increasingly embarrassing “Occupy” movement:

We have work to do. We think that important to that is enhanced by what’s happening in the Occupy [movement], which is the 99 and one. They really emblazoned that in the minds of the American people. That’s what we dedicated our lives to, but they gave it that clarity. People say they didn’t have a message. They may not have a message, but they have a statement. And the statement is the status quo is unacceptable — 99 and one.

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The Political Class has honed a dangerous skill, building the perfect undetectable fraud machine. Americans need to learn to spot these scams for their own protection and realize that the perpetrators can come from either political party and often work in cahoots with attorneys or big business.

Think about three seemingly unconnected news stories, all examples of costly or dangerously indictable fraud machines…

• The economic collapse of 2008 was caused in part by relaxed mortgage rules that allowed borrowers to get a home loan without a down payment or even proof of income in some cases.
• In the Pigford settlement, claimants were able to get $50,000 checks by asserting without proof that they had “attempted to farm.”
• In a move strongly supported by the NAACP and other liberal advocacy groups, the Obama Department of Justice just stopped South Carolina’s plan to put in place some minimal ID requirements for voting. Currently voters in a number of states don’t need to show any photo ID or other identity checks in order to cast a ballot.

All three stories are examples of systems that have been intentionally set up with such low standards that they invite fraud. But ingeniously, they have also been set up in a such a way that makes them almost critic-proof because the lack of standards makes detection of fraud nearly impossible. When the system is questioned, the defenders, creators and beneficiaries then point to the lack of “proof” of fraud as a reason to keep the status. Thus, a self-perpetuating fraud scheme is kept alive as long as possible.

Make no mistake, these scams are costly….

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Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, today released its 2011 list of Washington’s “Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians.” The members of the Senate on the list include:

Former Senator John Ensign (R-NV)

Dishonorable Mentions for 2011 include:

• Former Senator John Edwards (D-NC)

Former Senator John Ensign (R-NV): John Ensign, former U.S. Senator from Nevada and former Chairman of the Senate Republican Policy Committee, was forced to resign from office in May 2011 as the result of an investigation by the Senate Ethics Committee. In a scandal that first broke in 2009, Senator Ensign publicly admitted to an affair with the wife of long-time staffer Douglas Hampton. Ensign then allegedly tried to cover up the affair by bribing the couple with lucrative gifts and political favors.

According to The New York Times, after Hampton discovered the affair involving his wife Cynthia, the senator bought his silence by giving him “a strong boost into a lobbying career.” Ensign asked political backers to find Hampton a job. “Payments of $96,000 to the Hamptons also were made by Senator Ensign’s parents, who insist this was a gift, not hush money. Once a lobbying job was secured, Senator Ensign and his chief of staff continued to help Mr. Hampton, advocating his clients’ cases directly with federal agencies.”

These lobbying activities seemingly violated the law related to the Senate’s “cooling off” period for lobbyists. According to Senate rules, former Senate aides “may not lobby the Member for whom he worked or that Member’s staff for a period of one year after leaving [their] position.” Hampton began to lobby Ensign’s office immediately upon leaving his job on Capitol Hill. (more…)

Evangelicals are in a civil war in Iowa. If they could unite behind a candidate, they could defeat Mitt Romney and Ron Paul in the Iowa caucuses, but they can’t. Part of the problem is that three candidates are running for evangelical support but Iowa simply isn’t big enough for the three of them. They’re splitting the vote. Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann, and Rick Santorum are all making a play for the social conservatives they need to propel them onward. In 2008, sixty percent of the participants in the Iowa caucuses were evangelical.

Eight days ago Rick Santorum won the personal endorsements of two evangelical leaders—Bob Vander Plaats, CEO of the Family Leader, and Chuck Hurley, President of the Iowa Family Policy Center. The endorsements may have been just enough to push Santorum up in the polls—at Bachmann’s expense. Vander Plaats asked Bachmann to drop out and endorse one of the social conservatives.

The Bachmann team is simply imploding with the defection of a top aide to the Ron Paul camp.  She herself has said that it would take nothing less than a “miracle” to win. When you have to keep insisting that you aren’t dropping out—it may be time to drop out.  Look to Bachmann to exit stage left after Iowa. The question becomes who will she endorse.

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From The Hill:

An electric vehicle manufacturer that received a $529 million loan from the Energy Department is recalling 239 vehicles.

The Transportation Department’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said Thursday that the company, Fisker Automotive, will recall its Karma vehicles made between July 1, 2011, and Nov. 3, 2011, because of a faulty electric battery component that could cause a fire.

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From PJMedia:

Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) caused a bit of a stir when he announced he was not seeking re-election. Frank, a high-visibility member of Congress for more than 30 years, is in one of the safest Democratic districts in the nation. Yet he is not alone: there are several other Barney Franks fleeing the 112th Congress. Eight other veteran House Democrats who reside in safe congressional seats are throwing in the towel.

The problem isn’t merely in the House. Just this week, U.S. Senator Ben Nelson from Nebraska announced he won’t seek re-election this coming November. Nelson is one of seven Senate Democrats who have decided to “voluntarily” retire ahead of the 2012 elections. This is a repeat of the 2010 elections when a flood of Democrats decided to retire rather than face certain defeat.

The retirement of rank-and-file Democrats is an especially bad sign for the Democrats if they have any hope of retaking the U.S. House. The nine House retirements are even more notable because each ranks high in seniority for key House committees — if the House returned to Democratic rule, they would be in line to assume chairmanships.

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Eric Holder’s Department of Justice (DOJ) has launched an all-out war on voter-ID laws and other measures to safeguard to the electoral process. Although Holder’s actions are purportedly to prevent African-Americans from being disenfranchised, the reality is that they serve the crass political purpose of ensuring that Holder’s boss gets reelected next year.

In the past several years states have increasingly focused on measures to protect the vote. After years of the federal government loosening voting regulations, such as through the Motor Voter Act and HAVA (Help America Vote Act), the pendulum started swinging back at the state level.

The clearest example of this trend is through voter-ID laws. In 2008 the Supreme Court upheld Indiana’s landmark law requiring citizens to show that they are the person they claim to be by showing government-issued ID before casting a ballot. But to ensure that those without driver’s licenses or passports are not disenfranchised, Indiana provides free ID’s to everyone who applies for one. The Court upheld this law, with the primary opinion written by no one less than liberal lion Justice John Paul Stevens.

Such laws combat voter fraud that we see on Election Day, especially in certain parts of the nation. In Washington State, King County suddenly “discovered” enough previously “unnoticed” votes for Democrat Christine Gregoire to edge out Republican Dino Rossi for Washington’s governorship in 2004. There are also examples from Wisconsin, Missouri, and other states.

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Last year, I came up with a saying that “Bad Government Policy Begets More Bad Government Policy” and labeled it “Mitchell’s Law” during a bout of narcissism.

There are lots of examples of this phenomenon, such as the misguided War on Drugs being a precursor to intrusive, costly, and ineffective money laundering policies.

Or how about government healthcare subsidies driving up the price of healthcare, which then leads politicians to decide that there should be even more subsidies because healthcare has become more expensive.

But if you want a really stark example of Mitchell’s Law, the internal revenue code is littered with examples.

The politicians created a nightmarishly complex tax system, for instance, and then decided that enforcing the wretched system required the erosion of civil liberties and constitutional freedoms.

The latest example of this process involves the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, a piece of legislation that was imposed in 2010 because politicians assumed they could collect lots of tax revenue every single year by getting money from so-called tax havens.

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From The Hill:

New light bulb efficiency standards will begin phasing in on Jan. 1 despite intense opposition from conservatives, who have blasted the rules as a textbook unnecessary federal regulation.

While Republicans secured inclusion of a measure blocking funding for enforcement of the standards in a year-end spending bill, energy efficiency groups say the provision will have little practical impact. The Energy Department rules will nonetheless go into effect at the start of 2012.

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A politician is described as a “lame duck” once he or she has been defeated or announced their retirement, and is simply finishing out the remainder of their term in office. And even after Nov. elections are over and a large number of Senate and House members are voted out, the lame duck Senators and House members are usually just that – lame. But occasionally, they are fierce because the defeated office holder is bitter and has approximately two months to wreak havoc with his or her vote before leaving DC. When this happens, ideologues will use the time where they’re completely accountable to voters to score points for their side. We saw this after the Nov. 2010 elections when defeated Senators and House members banded together in late Dec. to repeal “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,” so homosexuals could serve openly in the military. Yet as bad as this is, the opportunities for a lame duck office holder to attack our freedom grows exponentially when said office holder is in the White House, and when he’s an ideologue who hates private gun ownership, the right to self defense, and the 2nd Amendment.

And this brings us to a crucial point. Namely, that if Obama wins re-election in 2012, he will be awarded four years of lame duck status in which to do anything and everything he wants to lessen our ability to own and use guns. He knows he won’t have to answer for it because he will not be running for re-election in 2016.

What would four years of a lame duck President Obama mean for gun owners? The only way to know is to gauge it by the things Obama has done already. In 1995, when pursuing a state level office in Illinois, Obama “endorsed a complete ban on all handguns.” At that time, he also expressed his support for waiting periods for handgun purchases. A “waiting period” is a set period of time, usually 5 to 10 days, which has to elapse between the time an individual buys a gun and is actually allowed to take it home. In other words, customer “X” would pay for a gun on Monday of this week, but would not be allowed to pick it up at the store until Monday of next week. (The foolishness of this scenario is evident when one considers what that waiting period might mean for a female who is being threatened by a violent criminal or sexual predator. She would have to buy her gun then spend the next week, the “waiting period,” hoping the criminal or predator would be willing to wait a week before attacking as well.)

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