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1. Questions for Soto
Will She Answer Them?
2. A thought regarding the 2010 elections
House edition
3. Kent Conrad Makes Liberals Angry
He’s Giving Up on Nationalized Health Care
4. U.S. Considers Mileage Tax to Replace Federal Gas Tax
No privacy concerns there. None. At all. Trust them.
5. Panama will swear in a new president today
Ricardo Martinelli has his work cut out for him.
6. Quick, Clever Responses to Obamacare Arguments
Must reads on healthcare reform
7. WPost: GM Will Probably Never Pay Back Its Loans
Is anyone surprised?
8. A friendly suggestion to former McCain campaign staffers.
You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake.
1. Questions for Soto
Will She Answer Them?
Senator Cornyn has been sending out a “Daily Question for Judge Sotomayor” for the last several weeks and will do so up to, and possibly through, her hearing that is scheduled to begin on July 13th. These questions are very good - and her answers to them would be enlightening… that is, IF she answers them fully and honestly.
We shall see.
Yesterday’s question (Wednesday, July 1, 2009):
Has the Supreme Court made any missteps in the last fifty years that might justify public skepticism about lawyers and the courts?
Explanation: Judge Sotomayor has written extensively about public mistrust and skepticism towards the role of lawyers and judges. See Hon Sonia Sotomayor & Nicole A. Gordon, Returning Majesty to the Law and Politics: A Modern Approach, 30 Suffolk U. L. Rev. 35 (1996-97). In her writings, she blames the public for misunderstanding the role of lawyers and judges. She suggests that public skepticism is the result of poor public education on the importance of lawyers and the many roles they should play. The public should be educated, she writes, about “the importance of respecting every kind of legal practice” and the role of the courts.
Judge Sotomayor’s account raises the fair question of whether she thinks the Supreme Court is to blame for any of the public skepticism about the law and lawyers. In my view, some of the public skepticism about the law is justified: The Supreme Court has too often been ruled by politics and not law. The Supreme Court has too often turned the policy preferences of its members into constitutional law that the elected branches are not free to change. In her hearings, I hope Judge Sotomayor will tell us what role she thinks the Supreme Court has played in triggering public mistrust of lawyers and the law. I hope she will explain what missteps if any the Supreme Court has made, as well as what the Supreme Court can do to help the public have greater faith in the law in the future.
2. A thought regarding the 2010 elections
House edition
Just on the off chance that somebody out there is still not on-board with the notion of taking back the House, please contemplate the table below:
| Committee | Chair | Born | Age | Elected |
| Ways & Means | Charles Rangel | 1930 | 79 | 1970 |
| Appropriations | David Obey | 1938 | 70 | 1969 |
| Energy & Commerce | Henry Waxman | 1939 | 69 | 1975 |
| Rules | Louise Slaughter | 1929 | 79 | 1987 |
| Financial Services | Barney Frank | 1940 | 69 | 1981 |
| Judiciary | John Conyers | 1929 | 80 | 1965 |
Those are, generally speaking, the six most powerful committees in the House of Representatives - and if you’ll note carefully, you’ll see that the chairs of them that aren’t pushing seventy are the ones who are pushing eighty* (the average age of Representatives in the 111th Congress is 57). You’ll also note that the least amount of time-in-Congress for any of them is twenty-eight years; in fact, all but two of them have been in Congress for longer than I’ve been alive, and I’ll be forty next year. This is not really unexpected (except, of course, by people silly enough to believe that Democratic control of Congress meant a “fresh start,” or some other nonsense): seniority counts for a lot in determining committee assignments.
3. Kent Conrad Makes Liberals Angry
He’s Giving Up on Nationalized Health Care
If all you’re doing is looking at the rules of the Senate, it certainly appears that Senator Conrad is right. He’s also being very politic - inasmuch as Democrats would pay a heavy price if they passed a costly, tax-raising health care plan, which went on to become a political liability in the midterm elections. That said, the liberal activists who animate the Democratic party are desperate for a government-run plan. It’s the wedge they need to get to single-payer, and in the view of many it is the only reason to pursue health care ‘reform.’ For all that reason, Conrad’s warning - that no health care reform is possible without significant Republican support - will make put him firmly in the crosshairs of the left’s fever swamp.
The fight over a government-run plan is shaping up as the most important one in the health care debate. If Democrats succeed in setting up Washington bureaucrats in a taxpayer-funded insurance company, you can be confident that they will eventually be deciding on your plan and rationing your benefits. The last thing liberals want is for a leading Senate Democrat to be throwing in the towel before the fight is fully engaged.
4. U.S. Considers Mileage Tax to Replace Federal Gas Tax
No privacy concerns there. None. At all. Trust them.
Kansascity.com reports that trials are underway by the University of Iowa for determining the benefits of a GPS-based mileage tax to offset the revenue decline by newer, more fuel-efficient vehicles.
God forbid people try to save money. A justification is that electric cars like the Chevy Volt “won’t pay a penny of gas tax” even though it has a GAS ENGINE that charges the motor. I’m also paranoid enough that I’d prefer not being harassed or suspected of a crime because I’m one of 200 other cars listed as “near” a crime scene.
5. Panama will swear in a new president today
Ricardo Martinelli has his work cut out for him.
Twenty years after the Unites States removed Manuel Noriega from power, and with the recent focus on Honduras, Panama has been well below the radar for most Americans.
Ricardo Martinelli will officially be sworn in as president of Panama today and will serve a five-year term. The occasion will mark Panama’s fourth peaceful presidential transition since the overthrow of Noriega in 1989. Martinelli, who was the candidate of the conservative Alliance for Change party, won a landslide victory of 59 percent to 36 percent over Hugo Chavez favorite Balbina Herrera in the May elections.
Martinelli is a confirmed capitalist in a region where the Castro brothers and Chavez have been actively trying to export their brand of Marxism. Panama’s president-elect has a degree in business administration from the University of Arkansas (Class of 1973) and earned an MBA from the INCAE Business School in Costa Rica. He has experience in government and in the private sector. Martinelli served as Panama’s director of Social Security from 1994 to 1996, and from 1999 to early in 2003 was minister for canal affairs and chairman of the Board of Directors of the Panama Canal Authority. He is chairman of the board of a large chain of supermarkets, chairman of two other companies and sits on the boards of at least eight others.
6. Quick, Clever Responses to Obamacare Arguments
Must reads on healthcare reform
Simple, clear, plain english is good when it comes to health care. It is hard to do unless you are really good.
It is even more difficult to make talking about health care interesting and witty.
The winner is George Newman writing in the Wall Street Journal in an article titled: “Parsing the Health Reform Arguments.”
If you are going to read any one thing on health care, read Newman’s piece.
If you are going to read any two things on health care, read this from Forbes by Shikha Dalmia. All of the foregoing comments apply to this piece as well.
7. WPost: GM Will Probably Never Pay Back Its Loans
Is anyone surprised?
I suppose there are few of us who hadn’t guessed this, but it would have been nice to have it reported before the administration committed to a bailout.
Liberals have complained that about the secretive nature of the Bush administration. They argued that some folks in the Bush White House should have known that Iraq lacked stockpiles of Weapons of Mass Destruction, but failed to disclose all they knew. Here we have a case of the supposedly-transparent Obama administration sitting on negative information because it might have spoiled the GM bailout. Just like they sat on a report about the effectiveness of DC’s charter schools. And just like they sat on an inconvenient EPA report that casts doubt on the administration’s arguments about ‘global warming.’
If President Obama was genuinely interested in openness and transparency, he would have said clearly up front that there was no expectation that all this money would come back to the Treasury. Instead, he has concealed that fact - largely because he could see how many Americans opposed this bailout. If he had been truthful about his plan, there would have been even more opposition to this payoff to the unions.
8. A friendly suggestion to former McCain campaign staffers.
You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake.
Since everybody else is piling on, let me add my own comment to the fray. If you were one of the people who participated in that Vanity Fair hit piece, and we find out your name, you will be a net drag on any national campaign for the rest of your professional career. Not because you helped the Left go after Governor Palin, but because you are an untrustworthy sneak who is dedicated to propping up the elitist system in DC, not fixing it. Any candidate that hires you will have to overcome the base’s natural reluctance to work with a campaign that would hire someone like you. This can be done; but it’s much easier to hire people with your skill set and a name for basic party loyalty.
If you are a McCain staffer who did not talk to VF, I suggest that you find some way to demonstrate that you aren’t one of the people in the first paragraph. Because until we know who talked, the default assumption is going to be that you may have talked. This will not wreck your career, but it will blight it if the base has anything to say about it. On the bright side, a simple and declarative denial will do; of course, if your denial is a lie and we catch you at it, brush up on your typing skills.
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