Alexandra Pelosi, daughter of House Minority Leader and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, told Big Government this week that her mother wants to leave Congress–and that she remains in Washington only at the behest of her campaign donors.

During a telephone interview, Ms. Pelosi–speaking from a friend’s home in New York City–described her mother’s predicament:

She would retire right now, if the donors she has didn’t want her to stay so badly. They know she wants to leave, though. They think she’s destined for the wilderness. She has very few days left. She’s 71, she wants to have a life, she’s done. It’s obligation, that’s all I’m saying.

Pelosi’s revelation is significant, given that her mother pushed to serve as Minority Leader after the Democrats’ historic losses in the 2010 midterm elections, and that many Democrats–including President Barack Obama–are campaigning on the expectation that she will be restored as Speaker if they can retake the House in 2012.

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This is a solid campaign move by Perry. Newt Gingrich is coming on strong in the polls as the anti-Romney, but the fact that the former Speaker is an old-school Beltway insider is a vulnerability. If Perry hopes to revitalize his campaign and get back in the race, it’s essential he plays up his outsider status, and he seems to be doing just that.  The anti-establishment outrage has reached a fever pitch since the explosive “60 Minutes” report on Peter Schweizer’s Throw Them All Out, and Perry is the first GOP candidate to try to own that sentiment.

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BETTENDORF, Iowa (AP) – Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry said Tuesday that if elected he would end lifetime appointments for federal judges and slash the pay for federal lawmakers, effectively turning Congress into a part-time institution.

In a speech laying out how he would “uproot and overhaul” Washington, the Texas governor suggested that his Washington outsider background—unlike some of his GOP rivals—would help him succeed at changing the city’s culture. Changing Washington also was one of President Barack Obama’s goals and he’s had no success on that front since taking office.

“Unique to the Republican field, I have never been an establishment figure, have never served in Congress or part of an administration and have never been a paid lobbyist,” Perry said. “My career has been that of a Washington outsider.”

Until he jumped into the presidential race in August, Perry spent his entire political career in his home state of Texas.

The plan Perry rolled out at a heating and cooling company in Iowa also calls for requiring a two-thirds vote in Congress for any tax increases, halting all proposed federal regulations and criminalizing insider trading by Washington lawmakers. (more…)

From the Associated Press:

The second-ranking House Democrat on Sunday joined the party leadership in urging Rep. Anthony Weiner to quit because of his sexting scandal, a request the New York lawmaker has sidestepped in favor of a temporary leave of absence.

The Republican Party chairman criticized Democratic leaders for not taking a more forceful stand earlier on the affair, which has overshadowed much of the legislative business on Capitol Hill over the past week.

Weiner has acknowledged exchanging messages and photos ranging from sexually suggestive to explicit with several women online, and the latest to surface appeared on the entertainment website TMZ.

The photos posted Sunday were purportedly taken in the House members’ gym and show a shirt-less Weiner with a towel around his waist and his hand on his crotch. TMZ said the photos were sent online to at least one woman.

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Americans delivered the House a record 63 Republican seats to ensure that the peoples’ voices would be heard.  And, while the voters thought their message was clear and received, now, it seems, the real battle ensues.

While Congress continues to kick the budget and debt can down the road and passes continuing resolutions to thwart a government shutdown, the Democrat leadership has dropped several messages to the GOP leadership:

“They cannot agree with themselves,” said Hoyer. He called for Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to distance himself from Tea Party conservatives and forge a compromise between centrist Republicans and Democrats.

Hoyer said Boehner should abandon the additional cuts conservatives muscled into the bill introduced by GOP leaders that would have cut $35 billion in spending this fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30. After an uproar from conservatives, GOP leaders rallied around a bill that would cut spending by $61 billion.

Of course he would say that.

This is not 1995 though and the game has changed, and frankly so have the rules.

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Maryland has long been considered one of the bluest of blue states. But with anti-Democrat fever running red hot, that is rapidly changing. There are competitive races everywhere. Thirty-year incumbent House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer is facing a stiff challenge from Republican Charles Lollar in Maryland’s 5^th District. In Maryland’s 3^rd, veteran Marine fighter pilot, Republican Jim Wilhelm, is challenging legacy Democratic Congressman John Sarbanes, son of longtime Senator Paul Sarbanes and former Republican Governor Bob Ehrlich is giving corrupt, pathologically dishonest Governor Martin O’Malley—the Boy Blunder—a run for his money.

But another race has flown completely under the radar up to now. Conservative businessman Frank Mirabile has mounted a powerful challenge to radical liberal 7^th District incumbent, Elijah Cummings. Maryland’s 7^th encompasses largely rural Howard County, part of suburban Baltimore County and western Baltimore City.

Cummings is black. His constituency is disproportionately black. But that is the only thing they share in common. Like most liberals, Cummings uses his fellow blacks to remain comfortably ensconced in his lucrative, cushy job. And he does nothing, I repeat, nothing to help them.

Enter Frank Mirabile. A hardworking family man who built a successful landscaping business, he is dedicated to returning government to its Constitutional roots and getting it off our backs and out of our pocketbooks. Mirabile has a deep grasp of both economics and the needs of the district, unlike Cummings who uses it like a vending machine.

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It’s time for your weekly dose of Coffee and Markets, featuring The New Ledger’s Francis Cianfrocca, a podcast brought to you by the fine folks at Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com and LibertyPundits.com, your home for conservative podcasts. In this week’s edition, we discuss the upheaval in the marketplace in the wake of Greece’s problems and we talk about the White House plan, as advocated by Steny Hoyer and Paul Volcker, to institute a VAT.

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Related Links:

TNL: What Republicans Should Have Done About Financial Regulation
Andy Xie: The Chinese Housing Bubble
Obama: “At a certain point, you’ve made enough money.”
Hoyer: Shared Sacrifices Will Solve Debt Crisis
TNL: What the Tea Party Movement is Really About

The University of Illinois Alumni Association recently awarded it’s “International Alumni Award for Exceptional Achievement” to the current President of Ecuador, Rafael Correa Delgado.  Since the University of Illinois is the premier university for the state of Illinois, let’s see the list of accomplishments President Correa can boast of while claiming this prestigious award:

• Transparency International listed Ecuador as one of the world’s most corrupt countries under Correa.
• He has seized numerous TV and Radio outlets in his country.
• He has jailed reporters critical of his government.
• Organzied crime has had a magnificient rise during his reign.
• He has rammed through constitutional changes to increase his power and extend his term of office.
• He was found to have FARC terrorists fund his campaigns.
• Documents found by Colombia show that he has actively worked with FARC terrorists. FARC has also been involved with kindnapping Americans.
• Ecuador has provided a safe haven for FARC terrorists to launch attacks on Columbia, an ally of the United States.
• Ecuador has ties to both Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and has increased ties to Iran.

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When the dust has settled, partisan rancor has gone the way of all flesh, and the history of our times gets written sine ira et studio, what will observers say about developments in February and March, 2010. No one really knows, but I will hazard the following guess:

In those days, there was a clock ticking in the background, but no one in Washington seemed to pay it any heed. Nancy Pelosi was in her counting house counting all the votes. Steny Hoyer was exploring whether one could somehow bend the rules so that his colleagues could pass a controversial bill while telling their constituents that they had nothing to do with it. Bart Stupak, caught between the dictates of religious faith and political allegiance, was pondering when and how to sacrifice the former to the latter. And President Barack Obama issued threats to members of his own party in the House of Representatives. All of this was done in pursuit of passing into law a profoundly unpopular bill that promised to bankrupt the country, drive prospective physicians out of the profession, deprive the elderly of Medicare benefits they had paid for long ago, and reduce the quality of medical care for all but those comfortably ensconced within what came to be called the American nomenklatura. There was also material for burlesque. After being accused of sexually harassing the fellows on his staff, one Democratic Congressman attacked the White House Chief of Staff, calling him a “son of the devil’s spawn” and describing in arresting terms the manner in which the man practiced in the shower the ballet steps learned in his days as a bagman for the Daley machine in Chicago. It would have all been quite comic had there not been that clock in the background steadily ticking . . . in a country far away of which the Americans knew little or nothing.

There were, to be sure, other events. In a coordinated effort directed by the President, Joe Biden picked a quarrel with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; Hillary Clinton vented her spleen against the Israeli government for announcing that it intended in a modest manner to increase the size of a long-established, already sizable, strategically located settlement on the outskirts of Jerusalem; Robert Gibbs snarled and sneered and ran his mouth on a subject about which he knew little or nothing and cared even less; and the President met with the Israeli Prime Minister in circumstances designed to broadcast his disdain to the Arab world. All of this was done with an eye to bringing down a democratically-elected Israeli government and setting the stage for a Middle East settlement between Israel and a Palestinian leader who lacked firm Palestinian support, who would have fallen from power when Hamas seized the Gaza strip had the Israelis not used their checkpoints on the West Bank to thwart Hamas’ operations there, and who was in no position to negotiate any sort of lasting agreement with anyone about anything at all. This, too, would have been a matter of comic relief had that infernal clock not gone on ticking . . . in distant Teheran.

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Hand-wringing today in Politico:

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer is warning that some of his Democratic colleagues are being threatened with violence when they go back to their districts — and he wants Republicans to stand up and condemn the threats.

The Maryland Democrat said more than 10 House Democrats have reported incidents of threats or other forms of harassment about their support of the highly divisive health insurance overhaul vote. Hoyer emphasized that he didn’t have a specific number of threats and that was just an estimate.

TheFederal Bureau of Investigation, Capitol Police and sergeant at arms briefed Democrats behind closed doors today about the incidents of violence — the most high profile of which have been toward Democratic Reps. Thomas Perriello of Virginia, Steve Driehaus of Ohio and Louise Slaughter of New York.

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The always impressive John Kass in today’s Chicago Tribune:

Not even three or four pipes full of Hopium could have convinced me that the Congress of the United States would ever start looking like the Chicago City Council.

But now, with the Chicago Way White House twisting arms for its federal health care legislation, Democrats in Congress and Chicago aldermen are beginning to share a remarkable resemblance.

They’re starting to look like fall guys.

“The Congress? They’re acting like aldermen. Like fall guys. And we know all about fall guys in the city of Chicago,” said Jim Laski, a former Chicago alderman and former federal inmate who is now a WGN radio talk show host.

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Congress is moving closer to enacting a law requiring all Americans to purchase health insurance. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer says that this is “like paying taxes.”

He’s right about that. But Hoyer made this statement as part of an effort to justify the health-care mandate on constitutional grounds. Here he indicates that he doesn’t understand the Constitution that he took an oath to support.

When asked what power the Constitution gives to Congress to enact this legislation, Hoyer claimed that it came from the Constitution’s “general welfare” clause.

Article One, section eight says that Congress can “lay and collect taxes… to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States.”

But what defines the “general welfare”?

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From Americans for Limited Government:

October 7th, 2009, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson today condemned members of the House for voting to refer a resolution that would have removed Congressman Charlie Rangel as Chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee.

“Once again, the Democrat-controlled House has voted to sweep outright corruption under the rug on behalf of a fellow party member who failed to report more than $1 million in outside income as required by House rules,” Wilson said.

“The least Congress can do is not have Rangel serving as Chairman of a committee that deals with taxes while an ‘ongoing’ ethics probe into his undisclosed income is taking place,” Wilson added.

The Resolution, proposed by Congressman John Carter, called for Rangel to be removed as Ways and Means Chairman until the Ethics Committee concludes its probe.

Instead, the House voted 246 to 153 to refer the resolution to the Ethics Committee. “A vote to refer the Rangel resolution to the Ethics Committee was a vote against the resolution, plain and simple,” said Wilson. (more…)