Interior Secretary Salazar has decided that America has serious energy needs – needs which must be addressed through an emergency effort to activate new sources quickly. Is this a sudden move to expedite offshore drilling – and reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil? Not quite.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar on Tuesday said his department would propose regulatory changes to simplify and speed the leasing process for wind energy development off the Atlantic coast. In addition, the department will work aggressively to process applications to build transmission lines to move the electricity produced by offshore wind farms to consumers, he said at a news briefing in Baltimore with officials from Maryland and Delaware.

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RedState’s Tabitha Hale is hosting a livestream of tonight’s election results, along with a number of other well-known bloggers. Watch it here, and you’ll hear from a number of great candidates and new Members of Congress. Word is that guests will include Marco Rubio, Mike Lee,  Joe Miller, John Raese, and lots of others.

Harry Reid is locked in a tight election contest with Sharron Angle, and his campaign is pulling out all the stops to improve his chances for re-election. According to National Review, that includes pressuring Harrah’s Casinos to dragoon their staff into voting for Reid:

Executives at the casino giant Harrah’s pushed company employees to vote early in an all-out effort to help the Harry Reid campaign, according to internal emails obtained by Battle ‘10.

The stepped-up effort began Wednesday when a Reid staffer sent an email pleading for help to Harrah’s top lobbyist, Jan Jones. Soon after, Marybel Batjer, Harrah’s vice president of public policy and communications, distributed that plea via email to executives throughout the company.

The Reid campaign staffer, whose name was removed in the email Batjer sent to Harrah’s executives, said “ANYTHING” would be done to help with the company’s get out the vote effort. The staffer cited the fact that 1,100 MGM employees had already voted and indicated dissatisfaction with the turnout from Harrah’s.

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Congressman Maurice Hinchey is clearly stressed by polls showing his re-election campaign in serious trouble. How else to interpret his unhinged reaction when a reporter asked him about earmarks he secured which seem to have enriched him personally, Hinchey reportedly came unglued:

After the shooters turned off their cameras and started to break down, Hinchey made a beeline for Kemble and got in his face, according to a YNN videographer who was on the scene. The congressman poked Kemble in the chest aggressively, according to the YNN staffer.

I spoke with Kemble briefly this afternoon, and he told me Hinchey “put his hand on my throat” and then “realized what he had done and walked away.” The YNN shooter told me he did not witness this part of the altercation.

via HotAir

In stark contrast to Hinchey, we have no reason to think that George Phillips will assault a reporter – or sponsor earmarks that make him better off.

The liberal majority in Congress is in meltdown. The New York Times reports that no Democrat seems safe any more. Raul Grijalva is endangered. John Dingell might be defeated. Even Barney Frank’s constituents are waking up. In New York, Hinchey, McCarthy, and Maffei are in trouble. Each day brings a new story of a longtime incumbent who’s suddenly facing the strongest challenge of his (or her) career.

On a macro level, all the indications are that we are in for a seismic shift in Congress. The generic ballot continues to show America rejecting an extreme agenda.  The Hotline is talking about an ‘epic bloodbath’ that will make 1994 seem like ‘a walk in the park.’ And even some in Congress are starting to recognize that their baseless flailing could well backfire.

At no time in memory have conservatives had such an opportunity to deal a crushing blow against statism.

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There’s something vaguely familiar about this commercial. It makes me feel like I’m watching a sporting event on TV, somehow.

If you live in Connecticut’s 3rd Congressional district, Jerry Labriola could use your help. And if you live anywhere in America outside the district, he could certainly use a donation.

Before we dive into the frenzied attack some on the Left are mounting against the US Chamber of Commerce, let’s look at the record, shall we? While the Left is concerned today about the possibility of foreign money influencing elections, how vigilant have they been in the past? Let’s consider their scrutiny of some notable episodes in the past.

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Heritage Action for America has put together a cute video to raise awareness of the roughly $4 trillion tax increase coming on January 1.

via Ace

The Democratic leadership of the House and Senate cannot be allowed to think that the American people take them at their word, when they promise to cancel a part of this tax increase. The right time to address this is not in a lame duck session. It’s now – before millions of Americans have cast their votes for House, Senate, and gubernatorial races. The only reason to delay this vote until after election day is to leave Pelosi and Reid more room for raising taxes.

If you have not yet, go over to Heritage Action for more information about the looming tax increases. And add your name to the thousands who are demanding action now.

Who says the Left will never understand the Tea Party movement? Sure, they may have a long way to go, but they are making progress.

Take for example, this new ‘documentary’ from… some liberal activist. You can watch the preview if you have a masochist streak, or you can just accept my word that it’s another hack job aimed at grassroots activists – one that will make a nice rental for some sad left-wing coffee parties, starting on November 3. They’ll pop this in the DVD player ($14.99 – with free shipping!) and console each other with tales of how they could never hope to compete against the power of the Right Wing Machine. Because you see, the whole movie is about how the Tea Party movement is an astroturf operation. They have fancy charts and everything, which prove that this was put together by a bunch of shady billionaires. (Remember that projection is one of the signature habits of the professional left.)

But here’s where they are taking baby steps toward the truth: they no longer believe that the millions of people who have come out to tea parties are paid. Right there at the 1:40 mark, they mention that those millions of activists ‘are being secretly guided to suit the agendas of America’s corporate elites.’ And again at 1:55, they say that the people ‘are very much unaware of the front group,’ and of how ‘their thoughts are being manipulated.’ Now that may sound like an ignorant comment designed to soothe wounded egos on the Left, but nevertheless it represents progress.

Recall: it was not all that long ago that the Left seemed to think most of the Tea Party movement were paid political operatives or agents of the Republican party. Now some on the Left have graduated millions of tea partiers out of the ranks of ‘paid hacks,’ and into the ranks of ‘well-intentioned dupes and pawns.’ It may not be much, but it’s progress. At this rate, it might only take a few more years to convince them that this is a coherent movement, one that can change America and bring the nation back to its roots.

Ah… who am I kidding.

House and Senate leaders have promised that there will be a vote – sometime this year – to block a portion of President Obama’s tax increase, which will otherwise go into effect on January 1. According to Congressional leaders, they will allow a tax increase of about $700 billion to go into effect on higher earners, small businesses, and entrepreneurs. This is despite the fact that a majority of the House – and possibly the Senate – favors blocking all tax increases while the economy is in such poor shape.

In the House, dozens of Democrats are seen as possible defectors on a potential vote to block all tax increases. And in the Senate, the second-ranking Democrat in the leadership tacitly acknowledges that there is a majority for blocking all tax increases. Listen to what Durbin says at the 4:50 mark of this interview:

“there won’t be 60 votes for the Bush tax cuts… the Bush economic policy. That’s not gonna happen in the United States Senate.”

Liberals have been complaining for years about the alleged refusal of conservatives to allow ‘majority rule.’ They have complained that conservatives have used the filibuster in the Senate to block the president’s agenda. Yet when it comes to a $700 billion tax increase that will deal a heavy blow to job creation in the United States, leaders in both House and Senate suddenly refuse to allow a simple up-or-down vote. Durbin even admits the fact when he says that opponents of tax increases must meet a 60-vote test to win.

Why are DC leaders so determined to raise taxes?

Cross-posted to Liberty Central

A few months ago, Congressman Phil Hare (D-IL) was an obscure backbench Democrat in a safe House seat, in the president’s home state. With each passing day, however, it becomes clearer and clearer that his big government voting record and apathy toward the Constitution has led to a real race.

First Congressman Hare was caught on video confusing the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and saying the Constitution ‘doesn’t matter to me.’ Then he calls questions about the Constitution ‘silly stuff.’ He had already earned an ‘F’ on the Liberty Central legislative scorecard. And now comes word that he has filed an FEC complaint against a group of veterans:

“The collusion between Bobby Schilling and ‘Veterans for the Constitution’ is not only unethical, it’s illegal,” Moody said in a statement…

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Michelle Obama received a lot of criticism a few years ago when she said “for the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country.” She said it was not just because Barack Obama was winning, but because ‘people are hungry for change.’ It was a stunning admission – an acknowledgment that she could not ‘really’ be proud of her country while a majority of her fellow Americans disagreed with her. The response to the World Trade Center attack, our actions in Kosovo to protect religious minorities, our liberation of Afghanistan from the Taliban, our attempts at mediation between Israel and her enemies – even something apolitical like the space program – none were a cause for ‘real’ pride, because Mrs. Obama disagreed.

Given that sharp insight into her thinking – and into the way of thinking of many liberals – it should be no surprise that the shrinking circle of Obama supporters is no longer proud of America. Americans still want change, and they are still largely united. But now they want change from the Obama agenda, and they are united around their opposition to big government. And as Charles Krauthammer points out, that’s reason for liberals to regard Americans with shame and criticism, instead of the praise they lavished on them scant months ago.

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This is a stunning indictment from the leader of one of America’s most successful technology companies:

Unless government policies are altered, he predicted, “the next big thing will not be invented here. Jobs will not be created here.”

The U.S. legal environment has become so hostile to business, Otellini said, that there is likely to be “an inevitable erosion and shift of wealth, much like we’re seeing today in Europe–this is the bitter truth.”

Not long ago, Otellini said, “our research centers were without peer. No country was more attractive for start-up capital… We seemed a generation ahead of the rest of the world in information technology. That simply is no longer the case…”

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Do you want to attend the 9/12 rally and events, but can’t spare the money right now? The grassroots organization Liberty Central (for which I work) is sponsoring a contest to send one luck participant to Washington, DC for the upcoming 9/12 march. All you need to compete is a camera and a little creativity! Watch and enter:

Visit Liberty Central for more information!

Giffords’ district – one with a significant Republican lean – is currently rated as vulnerable by respected analyst Charlie Cook. For a Democrat in a conservative state, representing a Republican-leaning seat, it is important to stake out moderate stances on controversial issues. That’s particularly true on a hot-button issue such as immigration, which is obviously very important to Arizona voters this year.

That’s probably the reason Giffords took to the airwaves to make clear that she opposes the boycott favored by some liberals to pressure the state to rescind its new immigration law. This was probably smart politics, but it put her at odds with the liberal grassroots – and with Congressman Raul Grijalva, who was an advocate of the boycott. Worse still, Giffords’ border district abuts Congressman Grijalva’s and the two share the Tucson media market. It’s that market where her ads are airing.

For the grassroots, this is a major offense:

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Cross-posted to Liberty Central.

New York City Mayor Anthony Michael Bloomberg is a strong proponent of the Ground Zero Mosque. He has gone out of his way to speak up in support of the rights of Cordoba House to build a mosque at Ground Zero, in Manhattan. The Wall Street Journal reports that Congressman Anthony Weiner – a frequent rival to the Mayor – has written to compliment Bloomberg on his handling of the controversy – but has managed to do so without clearly affirming his own support for the project. Weiner’s refusal to take a stand on the project has previously been noted and criticized; does he intend this letter to clarify, or confuse?

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Cross-posted to Liberty Central

President Obama and the current Congressional leadership were swept into office on a wave of dissatisfaction with George Bush and a Republican Congress. Polls showed that Americans were open to the idea of greater government intervention as a way to address serious problems. President Obama promised that he would expand the role of government to ‘fix’ health care, Wall Street, the economy, energy, and other challenges. A new poll from the liberal Center for American Progress shows that less than 2 years later, confidence in the ability of government to solve such problems has plummeted. Faith in the federal government is now at its lowest level in the history of the poll:

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Cross-posted from Liberty Central.

Obviously, balancing the federal budget is a worthy goal – an extremely important one, in fact. Congress has massively increased spending, to the point that the United States is projected to run inordinately high deficits for years to come. The problem is one of historic proportions. It would be a welcome change if this Congress were to consider a package of spending cuts before the election, designed to restore the nation’s long-term fiscal balance.

But Congressional leaders and the White House recognize that it might be unpopular to push for spending cuts or tax increases before an election. They are deeply worried about the political impact of a controversial vote – one that might lead to catastrophic losses for the majority party. So rather than doing something gutsy, they are shifting responsibility to an unelected commission, and deferring a vote until a lame duck session of Congress:

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Cross-posted at Liberty Central.

Advocates of the president’s health care bill made a lot of promises in the run-up to passage of the law. They said health care costs would go down, people could keep insurance that they were happy with, the law would not increase the budget deficit, and small business would not be burdened by the new law. In the months since the law was signed, federal officials have begun to admit that all of those assurance were false. The latest shoe to drop comes from the IRS, which now says that businesses and charities will face significant new burdens – burdens which even this agency says may be ‘disproportionate’ to any benefit from the law:

The new regulations, which kick in at the start of 2012, require any taxpayer with business income to issue 1099 forms to all vendors from whom they purchased more than $600 of goods and services that year. That promises to launch a fusillade of new paperwork: An estimated 40 million taxpayers will be subject to the requirement, including 26 million who run sole proprietorships, according to a report released this week by National Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson…

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Flashback to March, 2009: the White House unveils an unprecedented effort. Rather than allowing President Obama’s campaign organization to hibernate for four years, the DNC turns Obama for America into Organizing for America – a permanent campaign that will push aggressively for enactment of the Obama agenda.

The Obama administration and the Democratic National Committee opened a new chapter Saturday in their ambitious project to convert the energy from last year’s campaign into a force for legislative reform on health care, climate change, education and taxes.

More than 1,200 groups from Maine to Hawaii spent the day gathering signatures in support of Obama’s economic plan, the first step in building what the White House hopes will be a standing political army ready to do battle.

Seeking to create a grass-roots force on a scale never seen before, Obama called the volunteers into action in a video message reminiscent of the 2008 contest. In defense of his budget, under attack from many quarters, he asked his supporters to go “block by block and door by door.”

In his Saturday radio address, Obama called his budget “an economic blueprint for our future.” He said, “I didn’t come here to pass on our problems to the next president or the next generation. I came here to solve them.”

The idea of deploying a grass-roots army for legislative purposes is untested. Unlike a political campaign, where ballots are simple, if blunt, instruments that produce winners and losers on a fixed date, a policy campaign is amorphous.

“If successful, it would have revolutionary implications for American politics,” said Ross K. Baker, a Rutgers University political science professor who counts himself among skeptics. “You can generate an enormous amount of support for an individual personality. It’s much harder to do that for a piece of legislation…”

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