President-elect Barack Obama
plans to nominate Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton as his secretary of state on
Monday.

Hillary’s nomination will be made in the face of the Constitutional prohibition in the Emoluments Clause (Article I, Section 6, clause 2):

That’s quite clear. A Senator, such as Hillary, is prohibited from serving in any federal office “created” or the “emoluments whereof” were increased during the Senator’s term.

The salary of the Secretary of State was increased in January 2008 by an executive order,
promulgated pursuant to a 1990s cost of living adjustment statute. Because the increase occurred during the time Hillary was a Senator she can not be the Secretary of state.

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She takes on Paul Krugman and exposes the antiquated nature of his policy recommendations:

Paul Krugman of the New York Times has been on the attack lately in regard to the New Deal. His new book “The Return of Depression Economics,” emphasizes the importance of New Deal-style spending. He has said the trouble with the New Deal was that it didn’t spend enough.

He’s also arguing that some writers and economists have been misrepresenting the 1930s to make the effect of FDR’s overall policy look worse than it was. I’m interested in part because Mr. Krugman has mentioned me by name. He recently said that I am the one “whose misleading statistics have been widely disseminated on the right.”

Mr. Krugman is a new Nobel Laureate, teaches at Princeton University and writes a column for a nationally prominent newspaper. So what he says is believed to be objective by many people, even when it isn’t. But the larger reason we should care about the 1930s employment record is that the cure Roosevelt offered, the New Deal, is on everyone else’s mind as well. In a recent “60 Minutes” interview, President-elect Barack Obama said, “keep in mind that 1932, 1933, the unemployment rate was 25%, inching up to 30%.”

The New Deal is Mr. Obama’s context for the giant infrastructure plan his new team is developing. If he proposes FDR-style recovery programs, then it is useful to establish whether those original programs actually brought recovery. The answer is, they didn’t. New Deal spending provided jobs but did not get the country back to where it was before.

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I was thinking about posting about that, but I’ll promote this instead. - Moe Lane

With a hat tip to the guys at Blackfive check out this note attached to the hospital room door of a severely wounded Navy Seal…

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What does it mean and what are its consequences for the United States and the world? My answer is here and the crux of my point can be found in the following excerpt:

The implications for the United States and for counterterrorism from the attacks in Mumbai can be summed up thusly: We continue to live in a dangerous world, the threat of terrorism is not a hoax and while we should not give in to fear, we should also not forswear vigilance, caution, preemptive measures and preparation. Additionally, we should abandon the fantasy that the election of Barack Obama will somehow cause other nation-states and non-state actors to somehow look at the United States differently and forswear following what they perceive to be their own interests merely because the face of the Presidency has changed.

Does the President-elect know that when it comes to health care policy, he is in basic disagreement over a fundamental issue with his own incoming head of the National Economic Council? I can’t tell what is going on here. Is the vetting poor? Is Barack Obama backing away from his commitment to employer mandates? Or is Larry Summers being asked to swallow his pride and back the Obama position against his better judgment?

If the latter, how much do you want to bet that Team Obama is now desperately trying to make sure that Summers doesn’t find any waiting television cameras, microphones or print journalists waiting for him so that he doesn’t lose that famous temper of his and sound off like the “disgruntled senior Obama official” he will likely ask to be called in the event that a news story is written about the gulf between him and the President-elect on a key health care policy issue?

This is precious:

Samantha Power, the Harvard professor who was forced to resign from Barack Obama’s presidential campaign last spring after calling Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton “a monster,” is now advising the president-elect on transition matters relating to the State Department — which Clinton is slated to head.

Power is listed on Obama’s transition Web site as part of the team reviewing national security agencies. Her duties, according to the site, will be to “ensure that senior appointees have the information necessary to complete the confirmation process, lead their departments, and begin implementing signature policy initiatives immediately after they are sworn in.”

In short, she is part of a team that is likely to work directly with Clinton, a potentially awkward situation for the two women. Obama is expected to officially announce Clinton as his choice for secretary of state after the Thanksgiving holiday.

My compliments to the President-elect. Earlier indications notwithstanding, he really knows how to get back at his electoral opponents, doesn’t he?

Yousefzadeh’s Law Concerning the Popularity of Republican Presidents: After a Republican President leaves office, the more time passes, the greater the chances that the chattering classes of Washington will gain a Strange New Respect for said former Republican President, while lamenting that the current Republican Party cannot be like the former Republican President. This will be the case notwithstanding the fact that during the Presidency of said Republican President, the chattering classes could not resist trashing him (and eventually, her).

Exhibit A in support of Yousefzadeh’s Law Concerning the Popularity of Republican Presidents: E.J. Dionne, who now finds it possible to celebrate the foreign policy realism of George Bush the Elder, even though while George Bush the Elder was in office, he was trashed and pilloried by the likes of . . . E.J. Dionne.

The mainstream media punditocracy may be inconsistent. But never let it be said that it is not predictable.

Consider the following commentary concerning the incoming Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, Christina Romer:

She burst into the economic scene with her doctoral dissertation that fundamentally changed how economists viewed the Great Depression.

Economics data indicated that the business cycle before the Great Depression was much more volatile than the economy after World War II. Economists widely assumed the data demonstrated the success of the post-Depression stabilization policies. Romer proved them wrong by showing that what seemed like a decrease in market volatility was really due to improved data collection.

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Mankiw demolishes Krugman. It’s worth remembering that Krugman won his Nobel for work he did before he became a pundit. He deserves the prize, but one of the unfortunate side effects is that the gratuitous nastiness and intellectual shoddiness one finds in his New York Times writings will become even more pronounced because his employers won’t have the courage to tell him that when it comes to his punditry, Krugman is being . . . well . . . a hack.

As told by Tyler Cowen. The point made about ensuring the expansion of monetary policy is highly important, but so is the point that Roosevelt’s agricultural subsidies and imposition of industry cartels were utterly and completely disastrous economically. One certainly hopes that taxes will not be raised and that the Bush tax cuts will still have a lot of life left in them during the Obama Administration–quite frankly, if the President-elect wants to encourage some serious economic stimulus, he would do well to take a page from Milton Friedman, recognize that individuals need to sense a long-term increase in their take-home pay, and pledge to make the tax cuts permanent. I am certainly glad to see that Professor Cowen ends his article by noting that our economic recovery will likely come about “for reasons that have little to do with most policy initiatives.” A good point for Team Obama to remember; it might inculcate some humility on their part concerning the limit of government’s power to do good, even as government will now seek to increase even further its power to meddle.

Reports that al Qaeda is planning to target sites like Penn Station and that there is increased chatter in intelligence circles concerning a terrorist event are certainly enough to cause reasonable people to be worried–especially in light of the gruesome attack in Mumbai. Who knows whether the attack in Mumbai is the culmination of the chatter, or whether it is only the beginning of yet another potentially bloody harvest? The fact that Americans and Britons were apparently the targets of gunmen in the Mumbai attack only serves to augment worries and concerns.

One hopes that the people in charge of the Presidential transition are on top of this. I suspect that they are; by all accounts, the transition is going quite smoothly. It had better–while I certainly hope to be proven wrong about this, there is every indication that terrorists are planning to take advantage of the transition to launch a catastrophic attack somewhere. Those who perhaps caused themselves over the past few years to believe that we were worried and concerned over relatively nothing have received a shocking and appalling reminder that there is indeed something to be concerned about. Yes, we will go on living our lives. No, we won’t give in to fears. But there is a threat, it is real and we had better stop pretending otherwise.

This is just a brief note to make you all aware that it’s being a very remarkable week in the Land of Fixed-Income and Monetary Policy.

I’ll post much more on this topic as soon as I can, but the Federal Reserve has qualitatively changed the nature of their response to the financial crisis. As of this week, they’ve embarked on what is called “quantitative easing” of monetary policy.

To oversimplify somewhat, they’ve transitioned from trying to effect policy by manipulating the price of credit, to directly creating credit themselves. This is by way of the flurry of new facilities they announced yesterday.

You can see for yourself one of the immediate consequences: yesterday morning, retail mortgage rates dropped almost 90 basis points. In most parts of the country, you can get a 30-year fixed rate mortgage for about 5.30%. It remains to be seen whether this will lure buyers back into the housing market, but it’s a hopeful sign.

Elsewhere, the Treasury has gone into overdrive, creating vast new supplies of the most desired asset class in the world, namely full-faith-and-credit US Treasury paper.

We’re going to see the yield curve flatten considerably in the near term. The Fed funds rate (which is currently targeted at 1%) is actually near zero. This limits the ability of short-dated paper (like T-bills) to increase in value.

Meantime, there is a lot of new supply hitting the 3-year sector of the curve. Treasury is now issuing new 3-year notes every month, and the new banks on Wall St. (which used to be investment banks) are issuing 3-year notes with an FDIC guarantee. That’s going to push up yields at this maturity.

And then there’s the Fed, which is out there buying up long-dated securities like Fannie/Freddie debt and mortgage-backed securities, and securitizations of consumer debt (student loans, credit cards, car loans). This will take sone supply out of the long end of the market and keep yields low.

More later.

-Francis Cianfrocca

As you can tell, we’re moving slow this day before Thanksgiving. I’ve already been digging into the sweet potato pie. This will be our first Thanksgiving at home. With a baby expected in the next two weeks, we’ve decided not to travel. And we’re having no guests. So it’ll just be us.

Evelyn, this morning, discovered the Superman episode with Batman and the Joker. When she’s not downstairs telling the Joker she’s going to have a talk to Jesus about him, is absolutely fascinated that all three are on the same show at once. Now if only Wonder Woman showed up.

As for me? Today, like every day, will be a work day. The fight continues. We’ll be posting sporadically and promoting diaries to the front.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Question for the Open Thread: What do you want to see RedState accomplish in 2009? My thoughts are here

(H/t to Em Zanotti for the pic)

1.

Of course, I have to believe that if Barack Obama did not actually believe that the surge overseen by Secretary Gates really has been successful, he would not have consented to keep the Secretary on. By agreeing to retain Secretary Gates at the Pentagon, the President-elect has not-too-subtly endorsed the very surge and counterinsurgency efforts he spent time denouncing on the campaign trail.

One wishes that he would finally admit as much. The votes have been cast, they have been counted, the Electoral College will meet and certify the results and Barack Obama will go ahead and become the 44th President of the United States. I think it is finally safe for him to say that when it came to figuring out what to do in Iraq, President Bush, Secretary Gates, General Petraeus and Senator McCain were right . . . and Barack Obama was wrong.

Barring such a verbal admission, I suppose that we will have to take this reappointment of Secretary Gates to constitute the closest thing to an admission of error the President-elect can bring himself to offer the rest of the country. Speaking of admissions, Chris Bowers admits that “keeping Gates on would only worsen Democratic image problems on national security, as he would be the second consecutive non-Democratic Secretary of Defense nominated by a Democratic President. The message would be clear: even Democrats agree that Democrats can’t run the military.” I am happy to take his word for the matter.

I was going to post-jack Josh’s post, but instead I’ll go all ego and put up my own post here.

Governor Palin will be in Georgia on Monday. In fact, she’ll be 30 minutes from my house at 1:30 p.m.

So anyway, I’ve decided to buy my wife a shotgun for Christmas. I could use Governor Palin’s advice on this as I’ve never bought a gun before. It will need to be a manly gun because I will take ownership of it once the three year old decides boys are not as yucky as she thought.

This is all to ask, rather shameless, can Christy and I get tickets or face time or something? Please?

By the way, I voted today for Saxby. Even in Democrat leaning Bibb County, the early voting numbers look good for Saxby. Let’s keep it up and keep the Dems from getting to 60.

Again, I cannot encourage these types of posts enough.

• A look at Wisconsin.

• Rounding up gubernatorial prospects.

• FL-05 data.

• This one is worth a gander again.

• Great Virginia blogging. Use Norm’s stuff as a good template for state stuff.

• My own contribution about Georgia.

• Another worth reading again.

Andrew Sullivan is livid. He is livid because there is a possibility–perhaps even a strong one–that John Brennan could become the new Director of Central Intelligence. Sullivan objects to this because he thinks that Brennan bought into “politicized” intelligence in the run-up to the war in Iraq and that Brennan may have been involved in war crimes. And of course, in situations like this one, it is entirely to be expected that Sullivan would lapse into pretentiousness:

The least we know is that Brennan is ambivalent about this. Ambivalence on this matter is unacceptable. We haven’t fought for decency and reform and a return to American values for so long to be turned back now. We didn’t work our butts off to elect Obama only to get Bush another four years at CIA. If Brennan emerges as the pick, those of us against the continuation of war crimes and the prosecution of war criminals will have to oppose him strenuously in the nomination process. We will, in fact, have to go to war with Obama before he even takes office.

And if Obama doubts our seriousness, I have three words for him. Yes we can.

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This is your “shock doctrine.” As is this. Now, if you want to write a book explaining how crises get used by ideologues to impose policy on the rest of us, you have a perfect excuse to do so. What’s more, your hypothetical book will bear a much greater relationship with reality than the one in which you misquoted and libeled Milton Friedman.

See? This works out for everyone!

Now, get cracking and write that book. Think of it as a way to salvage what’s left of your reputation.

Gradually, Hugo Chavez is getting his wings clipped:

Venezuela’s growing opposition and President Hugo Chavez’s left-wing party shared the spoils from weekend elections as they jostled for political momentum in the OPEC nation on Monday.

The multi-party opposition eroded Chavez’s dominance of regional politics, winning six top posts that govern over almost half of the population, although his Socialist Party took a clear majority of state races.

The results make more challenging Chavez’s goal of changing the law to run for reelection in 2012. The opposition defeated that move in a referendum vote last year and gained some extra ground on Sunday.

In power for almost a decade, the popular anti-U.S. president won 17 of 22 states, but the opposition held onto the two states it won at the last regional elections four years ago, picked up three more and won the powerful mayoralty of the capital Caracas.

Opposition candidates were helped by widespread voter complaints the government has done too little to control some of the world’s worst murder rates and Latin America’s highest inflation rate.

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This is Faiz Shakir. He is a research director at the Center for American Progress and editor of Think Progress.

Center for American Progress is the “think tank” that only thinks about how to spin Democrat agenda items into publicly acceptable public policies.

And Faiz Shakir is one of their hit men — running Think Progress to help set a media narrative in favor of Democratic policy. Or he is he?

Earlier today he sent an email to Saxby Chambliss’s campaign from his gmail account:

From: Faiz Shakir [mailto:faiz.shakir@gmail.com]
Sent: Monday, November 24, 2008 11:27 AM
To: Michelle
Subject: press list

Hi, I’m coming down to Atlanta to cover the campaign for a few conservative blogs. Any chance I can get on your press list? Thanks

Yes, I’ve confirmed faiz.shakir@gmail.com is the same Faiz Shakir at Center for American Progress.

So is he really covering the campaign for conservative blogs? No. Of course not. He’s lying trying to get a press list from Chambliss’s campaign.

But why is a research director at a left-wing “think” tank playing partisan games?

“The Center for American Progress is a non-profit, non-partisan organization under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue code,” according to CAP’s website. CAP’s head honcho is in charge of Obama’s transition team. Is Shakir following orders in the fight to get a 60 seat Democrat majority to push Obama’s agenda?

Again, why is the research director of a non-partisan, non-profit think tank playing games — lying to get contact information from Saxby Chambliss’s campaign?