You know, I had this really interesting post in the back of my head for the inevitable screamfest that would have been directed at us by name over this Tiller guy’s murder*… except that when I actually saw the details of the one that eventually bubbled up, it all got pushed aside by one thought: 

Jeebus, people.  You’ve been doing this sort of thing forever.  Surely at this stage of the game you don’t need to plagiarize your battle plan from Bill Freaking O’Reilly.

I blame Firefox.  If only because they never get blamed for anything, which is actually kind of odd, when you think about it.

Open thread.

Moe Lane

*Of course there was going to be one.  These people can’t quit us.

After today, the hotel room rate for the RedState Gathering goes from $99.00 to $119.00 per night.

You can register here if you want the $99.00 a night room rate. You’ll get the hotel reservation URL after registration.

Amazing what a little fiscal intransigence can do:

The Illinois House overwhelmingly rejected a temporary income tax increase Sunday, moving the state closer to massive spending cuts that critics called a “doomsday” budget.

The House’s Democratic leaders didn’t even try to pass a larger, permanent increase that was approved by the state Senate a day earlier. Lawmakers said there was little support for that plan during private Democratic discussions.

Instead, the House considered a measure that would have bumped the state’s 3 percent personal tax rate to 4.5 percent for two years. House Majority Leader Barbara Flynn Currie, D-Chicago, said it would have produced about $4.5 billion for a state government drowning in red ink.

The Senate version is described here: essentially, while the Illinois Senate apparently was willing to ignore Republican objections (the truly strange term system that the Illinois state Senate has may have something to do with that), the Illinois House was apparently a little less happy with ending up ratifying significant tax hikes, particularly since the GOP was making no secret about the fact that it wasn’t involved in the process of making this budget in the first place. At least, that’s about the only reason that I can see for having a legislature that’s nearly 2-to-1 Democrat/GOP go so thoroughly the other way on this vote.  At any rate, the Illinois Republicans are indicating that they’re willing to participate in the future budget negotiations.  Assuming that the Democrats are willing to let them, that is.

No rush.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

Senator Lindsey Graham goes there:

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told “FOX News Sunday” he wasn’t buying President Obama’s attempt to walk back his Supreme Court nominee’s controversial statement from 2001. Obama said Friday that given the chance Sotomayor would have “restated” that comment, and that she was merely trying to express how her experiences give her perspective on others’ hardships.

“She didn’t say that at all,” Graham countered Sunday, suggesting Sotomayor’s statement raises questions about her objectivity.

“What she said is that based on her life experiences is that she thought a Latina woman, somebody with her background, would be a better judge than a guy like me — a white guy from South Carolina,” Graham said. “It is troubling, and it’s inappropriate and I hope she’ll apologize.”

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Promoted from the diaries by Neil Stevens, with a comment: This is apparently not the first time George Tiller has been shot at. He was shot in both arms back in 1993. He also has a history of flouting sensible regulation and oversight on abortion, in a quest to perform as many late-term abortions as possible.

Because of that, combined with the fact that reports say there were steps taken to cut out security cameras, I find it highly likely that this was a politically-motivated shooting. It is entirely the wrong thing to do though, achieves nothing to save lives, and must be prosecuted vigorously. The rule of law matters. After all, how could we even enforce abortion laws if we can’t enforce murder laws?

Abortionist shot and killed in Wichita, newspaper says.

Given the nature of this breaking news event, this post will not exceed the minimum threshold word count or supplemental analysis.

Alert readers may have heard recent mention of a new report that has come out of Spain, analyzing the outcomes of that country’s big “green energy” drive - a drive that is frequently held up to us as a model for emulation.

The results have been - to say the least - not only disappointing, but very negative. The salient economic highlights are findings that: 1) For every four “green” jobs created, nine other jobs were destroyed; 2) Among those “green” jobs, only 1 in 10 was a real, full-time job. None of this is a surprise; “alternative energy” requires overly-massive use of scarce resources - resources that can only be taken away from better and more productive activities.

But rather than belabor the point, it’s simply easier to point interested readers to the report itself. You can find it here; that link takes you directly to the .pdf file to download. The report is 51 pages long and begins with a good executive summary - and the file size is only 667kB, so it should download in a jiffy.

But when it comes to doing a circuit of the latest goings-on in the world of The Green Nightmare…. we’re just getting started.

The “Green Dream” is rapidly devolving into a “Green Nightmare” of zero-results foolishness, corruption, rent-seeking, and political destabilization. Good intentions do not obviate bad results - as physics has this strange habit of always winning. And those bad results are spilling out in all sorts of directions that go far beyond the mere supplying of energy.

Much, much more below the fold….

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Obama’s plan will eliminate the private insurance industry, “its premised on doing so.” He intends to create a socialist, government controlled health care system regardless.

Obama wants a single payer healthcare system. His deception offers a “choice” that is intended to disappear shortly whether people want their private insurance or not.

…And consider this an open thread.

(H/T verumserum.com)

Going through the news, here are some specific contributions to what CBS calls a “global effort” to clamp down on piracy in Somalia:

• India: “An Indian warship patrolling the seas near the lawless African country responded to a distress call Thursday from the Liberian-registered merchant vessel MV Maud, which said eight armed people on a skiff were approaching it at high speed, the navy said. The ship and a helicopter with marine commandos made their way toward the ship, where they saw two people attempting to board it, the navy said in a statement.”
• Australia: “An Australian warship will join international efforts to combat pirates operating from Somalia, the government said in Friday. Australia will send a frigate and maritime patrol aircraft currently on Persian Gulf security duties to join anti-piracy operations in and near the Gulf of Aden, Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon said in a statement.”
• Canada: “Canadian Forces boarding parties detained and searched two suspected pirate skiffs about 90 kilometres off the coast of Yemen, uncovering a large cache of automatic weapons, ammunition and rocket-propelled grenade launchers with warheads. Cmdr. Craig Baines, the captain of the Winnipeg, said the weapons seizures marked a very successful day for the Canadian frigate, which has been a constant thorn in the side of the Somali pirates that hunt merchant vessels in this, one of the world’s busiest shipping corridors.”
• The United States of America: We’re making a movie.

Moe Lane

Crossposted at Moe Lane.

Since our update yesterday, it has come to light that the dealerships that dodged (sorry, couldn’t resist) Chrysler’s silver bullet have circled their wagons minivans and are doing their fair share of PR work for the government-controlled reorganization of what was once the country’s third largest automaker.

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I’m sorry to have to tell you folks at The Gawker this, but it’s over.  You’ve been tagged by the guy from the cow college as Outside the Pale, and you’re not coming back from that.

It’s like this: you were fine with this post, for a given value of fine: you took precisely the line that was expected of you with the Mancow narrative.  Right-wing shock-jock gets waterboarded, now thinks it’s torture, yadda yadda and the Online Left cheers while it reaches for the tis… well, I’ll be polite.  If you had left it there, nothing further would have gone on.  But then you made the mistake of actually deciding that the evidence that this was a publicity stunt was actually worth publicizing.  So you got yelled at for it, a little; but you just kept pushing. So now you got yelled at, for real - and it doesn’t matter in the slightest that it’s by a rampaging buffoon who believes that Cheney had secret death squads.  Or that you actually agree with him that waterboarding really is torture.  Or anything else, at this point.

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During the 1970 Senate debate over Richard Nixon’s nomination of G. Harold Carswell to the US Supreme Court, Mr. Carswell was characterized by his opponents as a mediocrity. (Now, admittedly, considering who Obama has foisted off on us mediocrity looks pretty good.) Nebraska Senator Roman Hruska took to the floor of the Senate to defend the nominee:

“Even if he were mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren’t they, and a little chance? We can’t have all Brandeises, Frankfurters and Cardozos.”

What was sort of funny at the time has actually happened, in spades. David Souter and Anthony Kennedy have been valiant and indefatigable champions of mediocrity since joining the court.

At one time, the Supreme Court was divvied up by race and ethnicity. We had a Jewish seat, then a black seat (this seat also served as a representative of the lazy and the mediocre when Thurgood Marshall held it, but it is now vacant because Clarence Thomas is not a liberal), and a woman’s seat. For a short while there was a Catholic seat, but now it is hinted that there are just too many Catholics on the court.

The nomination of Judge Sotomayor represents a natural evolution in parceling out Supreme Court seats. Rather than the so 1970s criteria of race and ethnicity, her role on the court will be to ensure that bigots and racial supremacists have adequate representation.

She’s off to a rousing start. She’s a member of a racialist group, the Council of La Raza, she has extolled her own ability to render “better” judgment because of her sex and ethnicity than a white male (aka, the guys who brought you Western Civilization), and she has ruled that race not trumps competence in civil service promotions. The future of bigotry seems to be in safe hands and Senator Hruska, unbeknownst to himself or anyone else at the time, has been revealed as a prophet.

Yesterday, the Washington Times wrote about Departmnet of Justice dropping charges against Black Panthers and Democratic operatives for voter intimidation. Michelle Malkin tracked down the complaint filed by Bartle Bull. Bull — and Malkin flagged — that one of the Black Panthers told him “you are about to be ruled by the black man, cracker”.

Well, it turns out that there is video of it:

H/T Election Journal.

Roll Call is reporting that during the typical Friday afternoon document dump — a practice used to hide actions that might prove somewhat embarrassing to the White House — the administration quietly announced that some of the former restrictions on lobbying ballyhooed about during the late campaign have been lifted.

Let special interests ring!

Roll Call (see here, but subscription is required) says that the administration lifted bans on lobbyists that have some part of spending “stimulus” funds. So now getting hooks into bloated federal spending is open season for the very lobbyists that Obama pretended to disdain only months ago.

So much for hopinchange.

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So.  Back in February the President went to Elkhart, Indiana and made a speech where, as Deceiver.com helpfully reminds us, he included this part:

You can’t go take a trip to Las Vegas or go down to the Super Bowl on the taxpayers’ dime. There’s got to be some accountability and some responsibility, and that’s something that I intend to impose as president of the United States.

Earlier this week, the President took a trip to Las Vegas on the taxpayers’ dime.  His privilege.  He went there to raise money for the wildly unpopular Senator Harry Reid.  Likewise, his privilege. He did this even though the current Governor is quite upset at the President for helping to lose his state about 131 million in revenue so far this year - and upset from afar, because the President didn’t meet with either him or the (Democratic) mayor of Las Vegas.  Once again, the President’s privilege - hey, do you know the etymology of the word ‘privilege?’

It’s Latin: it means ‘private law.’

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs yesterday began the Obama Administration’s walkback of controversial comments made by Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor. At the daily press briefing, the perpetually over matched Gibbs attempted to explain away Sotomayor’s comment that a “wise Latina” would necessarily make better judicial decisions than a “white male” judge because of her gender, ethnicity, and life experience. But Gibbs never learned the first rule of being in a hole, and his explanation raises more uncomfortable questions for the nominee.

“I think she’d say her word choice in 2001 was poor. She was simply making the point that experiences are relevant to the process of judging. Your personal experiences have a tendency to make you more aware of certain facts and certain cases, that your experiences impact your understanding.”

The only facts that a judge has any business considering, of course, are the facts at issue in the case before the court. Gibbs’ assertion is an admission that the Administration wants judges who will decide cases not based upon the facts and the law, but on their personal preferences.

But Gibbs wasn’t done digging, and used a quote from Justice Samuel Alito to try and bolster his position.

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Naturally from our vantage point, Barack Obama is a left-wing terror as president. To name just a few things, he is turning our system from one of capitalism to one of socialism, he is attempting to undermine the Constitution by placing an activist on the Supreme Court, he is weakening our national security by frittering away the gains of the previous administration and by bending over backwards for our enemies while constantly flipping off our allies, he is looking to destroy our national healthcare system by introducing a disastrous single payer system, and he is attempting to give anti-business unions the power to destroy what is left of the business community that he himself hasn’t gotten around to crushing as of yet. We on the right are alarmed by his trip down the ruinous road that Europe has already well traveled to rueful results.

One would think that the American left (or the anti-American left as the case may be) would be thrilled that their most fantasized about social, political, and economic sledgehammers were being wielded by their Obammessiah. But, one might be surprised to see that the extremists on the left are beginning to rumble in seething anger over the fact that, to date, Obama hasn’t gone fast enough or far enough to the extreme left to suit them. One of these wild-eyed, bomb-throwers has even just called for his resignation.

So, are we beginning to see waning the far left’s love affair with The One? Might this disappointment turn into the sort of lefty outrage that it did with Lyndon Baines Johnson? Will Barack Obama’s left wing flap him to death?

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Wanna be an Ambassador in the era of “change”? OK, then what do you have to do? Do you need to speak a foreign tongue? How about have some training in diplomacy? Maybe exhibit familiarity with any particular foreign culture? Nope, not in Obama’s Washington. All you need to do is donate a hefty sum to the Obama campaign and voila, you are in like Flynn. It may not bother Obama, but this big donor cum ambassador situation is striking a sour note with those Europeans that thought that Obama was going to be a man more interested in professionalism, qualifications and a serious attention to foreign policy than in paying off big donors.

So much for “change.”

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This should be required reading by everyone under the sun.

In 1913, for instance, thinking it was being overcharged by the steel companies for armor plate for warships, the federal government decided to build its own plant. It estimated that a plant with a 10,000-ton annual capacity could produce armor plate for only 70% of what the steel companies charged.

When the plant was finally finished, however — three years after World War I had ended — it was millions over budget and able to produce armor plate only at twice what the steel companies charged. It produced one batch and then shut down, never to reopen.

The reasons listed for why government can’t run businesses include:

1. Governments are run by politicians, not businessmen.
2. Politicians need headlines.
3. Government does not tolerate competition.
4. Government enterprises are almost always monopolies and thus do not face competition at all.
5. Successful corporations are run by benevolent despots.
6. Government is regulated by government.

If you haven’t read Senator Cornyn’s post from this morning on the NRSC endorsement of Governor Charlie Crist over Marco Rubio in the open Republican primary for retiring Senator Mel Martinez’s seat, go here and read it now, and be sure to thank the Senator for taking the time to post a response to our concerns about his actions and decisions as head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

I have a few comments and concerns about the Senator’s actions, and about the ideas expressed in his post here today.

Florida Governor Charlie Crist (R) may be a shoo-in for Mel Martinez’s Senate seat in terms of sheer electability. However, it strikes me as being very vaild to ask whether we (i.e., the GOP) want to elect someone to represent our party and our brand in most exclusive club in the nation who is a proven tax-hiker and runaway spending supporter.

Further, if, as Senator Cornyn has said, blowback over tax increases and failed Stimulus spending promises to be a major factor in bringing out Republican voters (and in pulling independent voters away from the Democratic party) in 2010, do we really — and think about this, please — do we really want our nominee for the U.S. Senate to be someone who was on the wrong side of both of those issues?

As the Senator said in his post, the GOP isn’t a monolith; no successful party is. The Republican parties of Texas and Georgia don’t equal the Republican parties of New York and Minnesota, because values and people are different in those different places, and so a Republican won’t necessarily be the same thing in both. Unfortunately, in trying to make his case about this reality, Senator Cornyn decided to adopt the Obama-esque tactic of hastily constructing a strawman and swatting it down for the purpose of looking both smart and reasonable.

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Texas Railroad Commissioner Michael Williams is running to replace Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson in anticipation of her vacating her Senate seat to run for Governor, and he’s currently attempting to raise $10,000 by May 31st. Here’s some footage from him from the April 15th Tea Party:

If you like this, or his stance on current issues, feel free to donate.

Full disclosure: I am in contact with the Williams campaign.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.