The defenders of Association of Community Organizations (ACORN) are desperate and they have called upon their friends in Congress to deploy a last ditch effort to preserve the millions of your tax dollars given to ACORN every year.  Big Government web site broke the ACORN scandal showing video of two journalists posing as a prostitute and pimp requesting help to hide assets from the IRS in Baltimore, New York City and Washington, DC.  The Congress responded by passing legislation to stop federal monies from going to ACORN and, in response, liberal Members of Congress have called upon the research arm of Congress to declare that this attempt to defund ACORN as being unconstitutional.

Senator Mike Johanns (R-NE) and Representative Darrell Issa (R-CA) have both passed separate Amendments in the House and the Senate to defund the ACORN with overwhelming bipartisan support in the wake of the scandal.  The left responded by requesting a report from the Congressional Research Service (CRS), claiming that legislation defunding ACORN may be unconstitutional as a Bill of Attainder.  The goal of the left is to use this constitutional argument to stall legislation before it reaches President Obama’s desk.  Hans Von Spakovsky of The Heritage Foundation has written a response to the CRS report titled “Defunding ACORN: Necessary and Proper, and Certainly Constitutional” where he argues that defunding ACORN “certainly is not a bill of attainder.”

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Sotomayor on “fundamental rights” and why average Americans have a different definition than judges.  Clearly most Americans view the 2nd Amendment individual right to own a firearm as a fundamental, natural right that the Constitution recognizes.  Sotomayor seems to assert a definition that defines your fundamental rights as those that the Supreme Court, not the clear words of the Constitution, dictates.

It doesn’t have the same meaning that common people understand that word to mean.  To most people, the word by it’s dictionary term is critically important, central, fundamental.  It’s sort of rock basis.  Those meanings are not how the law uses that term when it comes to what the states can do or not do.

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Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, kicked off the hearings for President Obama’s nominee, Sonia Sotomayor to be Associate Justice to the U.S. Supreme Court, with a very strong opening statement.  

Sessions stated that repeated statements by 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Sotomayor exhibiting empathy for certain parties before the court evidences a potential problem with this nomination.  Sotomayor has said that ”experiences will affect the facts I choose to see as a judge” and made other statements that exhibit an empathy and prejudice for certain parties.  Sessions attacked this empathy standard as “more akin to politics” and clearly stated that “politics has no place in the courtroom.”  Sessions statement laid out clear lines and definitions on an appropriate, and inappropriate, judicial philosophy for judges.

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David Frum should take a hard look in the mirror if he wants to find the real culprit. 

I was a supporter of President George W. Bush, yet the demise of the Republican Party started during the Bush years and Frum’s former boss deserves a good portion of the blame.  President Bush moved forward on No Child Left Behind (a massive expansion of the federal government into education), the Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit (a massive new entitlement program), the so called Troubled Asset Relief Program (which never purchased one troubled asset and bailed out poor business decisions on Wall Street to the tune of $700 billion), and committed an inexcusable verbal blunder when he trashed the free market.  Bush made terrible statements about capitalism when he said “I readily concede I chucked aside my free-market principles” and “I’ve abandoned free market principles to save the free market system.”   I hope Frum had nothing to do with writing those stupid phrases that committed irreparable harm to the idea of free market capitalism.

Blaming conservatives is a way for the bedwetters, including but not limited to David Frum, in the Republican Party to shift blame from the moderate wing of the Republican Party and to engage in an overreaction to the events of yesterday.  Senator Arlen Specter decided to join the Democrat Party, because it is the only way he can win his seat back in Pennsylvania, a state that is trending Democrat.  No need to interpret Specter’s crass political decision as the beginning of the end of the Republican Party as we know it.  It is a sad state of affairs that Rush Limbaugh bashing David Frum and his holier-than-thou attitude has infected others in the big tent on the right like a bad case of the Swine Flu.

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The left is marching against free market capitalism and it is the responsibility of all conservatives to take up verbal arms against the progressive troops lining up to trash free markets.  E.J Dionne, self proclaimed progressive, writes for the Washington Post today that there is something to the argument that Americans are all Socialists now, because “capitalist theory and practice were being toppled by an economic catastrophe that proved how profoundly flawed the old system was.”  I guess Dionne wants to toss “old system” of capitalism in the trash, for a new Socialism-Light system with a big government nanny state to take care of us all.  What Dionne misses is that one of the factors creating the meltdown on Wall Street was the the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), requiring financial institutions to make loans to people who could not repay. 

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Rewarding failure is not just for Wall Street anymore.  Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner has done such an uninspiring job over the past few weeks that many in Congress have called for his head.  Much like Wall Street where Washington, D.C. is rewarding failure with big bonuses and massive multi-billion dollar bailouts, the Obama Administration is following the “rewarding failure” strategy by putting forth a proposal that would grant the Secretary of the Treasury the unprecedented power to nationalize private enterprise.  And I bet you thought those types of ideas went out the door when the Iron Curtain fell.  If you believed the era of big government was over then you have not been paying attention.

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Last week I reported that a source on the Hill told me that Mikhail Gorbachev is speaking to the Senate Democrat Policy Committee.

Reuters reports today that on last Friday, Gorby met with President Barack Obama.

U.S. President Barack Obama has held talks with Mikhail Gorbachev, a spokesman for the former Soviet leader said on Monday, in the latest sign of Washington’s efforts to “press the reset button” on ties with Russia.

I still have no details on the nature of the discussion with Democrat Senators but expect the Tuesday meeting with Democrat Senators was on the same subject matter of the Friday meeting with President Obama.

The House is debating HR 1586, a bill that would tax bonuses given to employees of bailed out businesses.  The bill would tax “90 percent of the TARP bonus received by the taxpayer.”  The TARP recipient’s employer must have received the money from “the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008″ (the TARP bailout), “the Federal National Mortgage Association and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation”, “members of the same affiliated group” (units of the TARP recipients, FNMA and FHLM monies), and affiliated partnerships.  Conservatives in the House and Senate need to use this debate as an opportunity to debate how this provision was placed in the Obama so called Stimulus bill and forbidding future bailouts.

This effort in the House and Senate to tax bonuses is not much more than a cover your backside vote to protect the Obama Administration and liberals in Congress who requested, through Treasury, that the AIG Bonus Protection Amendment be put in the Stimulus.  If conservatives in the Congress want to show some leadership, they need to use the bonus debate to fight the further nationalization of private enterprise.

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A source on the Hill tells me that Mikhail Gorbachev is speaking to the Senate Democrat Policy Committee today.  No details on the topic.

Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) gave a great speech putting the AIG bonus issue in perspective today on the Senate floor.

The bonuses for thousands of employees of AIG – the huge insurance company to which the government, the taxpayers of the United States, have shoveled $170 billion into to keep afloat – recall the Sessions maxim, announced about 20 years ago when I was U. S. Attorney attempting to faithfully enforce a host of federal regulations. It is stated:  “Oh, what a tangled web we create when first we start to regulate.”

The more we proceed with policies whereby the government owns 80% of the stock of a private insurance company – having poured $170 billion of our wealth into it – the more we are inevitably compelled to direct how the company operates, to the point of deciding who their executives should be, what the company’s salary scale should be, or what aircraft it can or cannot have or where or what kind of corporate retreat they may have, and whether or not it can pay bonuses.

The size of this investment – an absurd term when used to describe the reckless, gargantuan commitment of our citizen’s money to AIG – puts us, the American people, into the insurance business. Not long ago, I had occasion to meet an official of a healthy insurance company and in jest, I asked how he liked competing with a company supported by the deep pockets of the taxpayers. He replied that it was no joke, AIG was their top competitor in several insurance markets. At bottom we extract tax money from this businessman to keep afloat his reckless competitor. The size of this commitment cannot be lost on us. The entire Alabama state budget, a state well run by our fine Governor, Bob Riley, including the state education budget for all our thousands of schools and teachers, amounts to about $7 billion per year. How big is $170 billion?

The entire federal highway budget, for our interstate system, all our pork projects added to it, and the billions we send to states is $40 billion per year. How big is $170 billion?

So, like an unwise banker, we face the dilemma. Do we pour more good money in to revive this corpse in a desperate effort to recoup our improvident “investment’? Investment is the wrong term since no legitimate investor would have invested in this company. The bullet was already in its heart, only the government would do so.

Senator Sessions referred to a New York Times article that discussed how Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner had a “difficult” conversation with Edward Liddy about the notorious AIG plan to award $165 million in bonuses.  It is interesting to note that if reorganization of AIG had happened in bankruptcy under Chapter 11, these contracts would have surely been invalidated.  It is truly rewarding failure to give executives a bonus when they work in the business unit that almost crashed the company, and if you believed former Hank Paulson’s assertions, the economy as a whole.

Senator Sessions in criticizing the “Masters of the Universe” who crafted the bailout strategy and the so called Troubled Assets Relief Program makes a strong point that the United States should not be promoting big government ideas that have not worked to our European friends.

You see, we own nearly 80% of AIG. We paid $170 billion for this controlling stake. It is ours. Yours and mine. Who, then, is to run AIG? Secretary Geithner, that Master of the Universe, just now returning from Europe where he upbraided the governments of Germany and France for not doing more to invade the private sector, and not going far enough in debt? I suspect that running AIG might be a bit distracting even for this Master of the Masters of the Universe, because he has taken on the duty of advising not only the President and our Congress on how to fix our economy, but he is now advising our big government friends in Europe that they are too concerned about “taking on” more debt and must intervene even more aggressively in their economies. The world is his parish it seems. All the while, the proud people of the United States watch this spectacle unfold in total mortification.

Thank you Senator Jeff Sessions for standing up tall for the taxpayers and for what remains of free market capitalism in the U.S.

Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton, argues in Salon today that President Obama’s brand of economics is “revolutionary.”  Only an Ivy League educated lefty economist (i.e. - Keith Olbermann graduate of Cownell could not pull this one off) could have the intellectual gall to argue that the Obama budget is both “conservative” in the details, yet “revolutionary” in scope.  The left is gearing up for a public relations campaign (some would say a propaganda war) to sell the Obama budget and it seems as if the left will use every catch phrase possible to sell this plan. 

Reich argues that Obama’s brand of economics is ”an economic philosophy exactly the opposite of the one that’s dominated America for more than a quarter century.”  If by economic philosophy Reich means capitalism, then I think conservatives agree that Obamanomics would move the United States away from the free market to expand the role of government in health care, environmental issues and tax policy.  The era of big government is back and Robert Reich is cheerleading from the sidelines.

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As a candidate for President, Senator Barack Obama told NPR that “he might use signing statements to clarify his position on an ambiguous law, he would not abuse signing statements to undermine the will of Congress.”  President Obama yesterday used a signing statement on “dozens of provisions in a $410 billion government spending bill” recently passed by Congress.  Undoing many provisions of the Omnibus spending bill would seem to be an abuse of the process and is clearly an act undermining the will of Congress.  If the Obama Administration was unwilling to issue veto threats to force Congress to remove the supposedly unconstitutional provisions in the Omnibus spending bill, this act by President Obama is inconsistent with his campaign promise of “Change.”  

There are many provisions in the President’s signing statement and most students of government would agree that a signing statement is constitutional.  The Congress and the President have constitutional responsibilities and a signing statement is merely a President expressing constitutional reservations about a bill.  One provision of President Obama’s signing statement with regard to Whistleblowers will prevent transparency in government and will allow government officials to intimidate employees when they want to communicate with Members of Congress about illegal or improper activities on the part of the Obama Administration.

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The Senate Judiciary Committee is conducting a hearing today titled “Getting to the Truth Through a Nonpartisan Commission of Inquiry.”  Dan McLaughlin has an excellent post on Red State and I am seeking to build on the argument that the purpose of this commission is not to set up a so called “Truth Commission” to learn from mistakes made after 9-11, but to set up a partisan witch hunt.  It is clear that the left is furthering the legal trend of criminalizing politics. 

I would think that most conservatives agree that the idea of a commission to study and learn lessons from the Global War on Terror is a good idea, but a partisan commission to keep President Bush’s name in the news by selectively assassinating the character of former Bush Administration officials and potentially prosecuting them is not a good idea.

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Although Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) won a vote renouncing The Fairness Doctrine 87-11 last week (see the post for more details),  Senator Dick Durbin won a vote on a measure that has the potential to stifle free speech and destroy conservative talk radio on a 57-41 vote.  A Durbin Amendment to implement a different regulatory roadmap for the FCC to stifle talk radio was passed during Senate consideration of a bill to provide a vote in the House of Representatives to the District of Columbia.  The vote on the Durbin measure is an interesting case study on how the left is working attack conservative talk radio through what I call the Son of the Fairness Doctrine. 

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Kudos to Senators John Ensign (R-NV), John Thune (R-SD), Tom Coburn (R-OK) and Jim DeMint (R-SC) for using the bill to provide a vote in the House of Representatives to the District of Columbia to force votes today on expanding gun rights and trashing the idea of the federal government regulating the radio airwaves.  These senators used an unconstitutional bill to essentially treat the District of Columbia as a state to force votes on guns and free speech.

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The reviews are in on President Obama’s Address to Congress and Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal’s GOP Response.  The New York Times calls Obama’s speech “Reaganesque exhortation to American resilience” and the consensus among my circle of friends is that Gov. Jindal did not do a great job of delivering his speech.  I think we have bipartisan consensus that President Obama’s delivery was better than Governor Jindal.  After reading transcripts of the speeches, I have come to the conclusion that those who distrust big government and believe in a constrained Washington, D.C must give high grades to Governor Jindal and failing grades to President Obama.

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Don’t be fooled by President Obama’s purported renunciation of the Fairness Doctrine last week.  The far left fully intends to use a new regulatory scheme, the Son of The Fairness Doctrine, to regulate conservative talk radio.  As Erick Erickson wrote last week on Red State, “Congress will restrict how many stations a company can own in a market. They’ll also require advisory boards for each station and make it easier to address consumer complaints against stations.”  Although the left has backed away from the Fairness Doctrine because it is ineffective, they are gathering support for an attack on conservative talk radio.

White House spokesman Ben LaBolt told FOXNews.com that “As the President stated during the campaign, he does not believe the Fairness Doctrine should be reinstated.”  Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) said to The Washington Times, “I’m glad President Obama finally confirmed his opposition to the Fairness Doctrine … but many Democrats in Congress are still pushing it.  With the support of the new administration, now is the time for Congress to take a stand against this kind of censorship.”

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Conservative-hating MSNBC host Keith Olbermann is known for attacking Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh (i.e. guys who crush Olbermann in the ratings) on a daily basis for a slip up or error these hosts may make from time to time.  Last night, Olbermann and Howard Dean were attacking five governors (there are actually six) who are considering rejecting stimulus money on Countdown with Keith Olbermann when they engaged in a discussion of Missouri politics.  The conversation was very instructive of the lack of depth of knowledge that Olberman and Dean have with regard to the day to day politics in America.

The two expert analysts evidenced a complete lack of knowledge about current events in a bizarre discussion (see below) where they slammed Senator Kit Bond (R-MO) for voting against the stimulus, yet taking credit for provisions he was able to insert in the bill while running for re-election.  The problem with this analysis is that Senator Kit Bond has announced that he is not running for re-election in 2010.  Keith Olbermann — you and Howard Dean are this weeks worst political analysts on national TV.

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President Obama’s Press Secretary Robert Gibbs has recieved an F- for his handling of the Obama Public Relations effort by most objective observers.  Maybe President Obama should provide stimulus to Julio Osegueda who currently works at McDonalds in Florida and is a 19 year old student at Edison State College by elevating him into the postion of Press Secretary for the President. Julio wants to be a communications major and he clearly is better at expressing himself than current Obama Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. Who would fare better under the tough questioning of Jake Tapper of ABC News? See below for a comparision.

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