Sarah Palin has been declared Human Events’ conservative of the year. You can read Ann Coulter’s article on it here and read the interview here.

Thanks to Caleb for the graphics edit.

Use our Amazon Store.You can use what we use and help RedState make some money.

Senator Arlen Specter has quietly launched the opening salvo against Eric Holder’s nomination for Attorney General. Though Specter has tried to be discreet, Senate sources have handed me a copy of Specter’s latest letter to Holder that went out yesterday.

The letter shows that “committee staff reviewed [Holder's] questionnaire responses and noted a number of apparent omissions.” Specter is “respectfully ask[ing]” Holder to either supplement his submission or provide explanations for “why [he] believe[s] [his] submission is fully responsive.”

Specter, being Specter, lists eight major defects in Holder’s response. He even gets into the Blagojevich scandal. Specter points out that Holder failed to list op-eds Holder had written in favor of affirmation action and gun ownership restrictions.

He needles Holder for failing to mention a speech he’d given to the left-wing American Constitution Society in which Holder called for a “liberal renaissance.”

The list of 8 omissions is, in themselves, pretty damning. And they don’t even get into Elian Gonzales.

Eric Holder’s nomination is not just about the Rich pardon, which is troubling on its own. There is a whole thread here weaving in and out of his work and bio — a pattern of setting aside judgment and legal analysis in favor of political expediency and, in short, being a partisan yes-man — the very thing the left accused Alberto Gonzales of being.

If the GOP wants a scalp, Holder’s is the one to get. And Specter seems intent on doing so. You can read his letter here.

Barack Obama’s transition site, change.gov gives a breakdown of Obama’s inauguration. According to the website, Obama will deliver the following oath of office:

“I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of the President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

That is, in fact, the actual oath found in the actual constitution. But every President has added “so help me God” to the end.

Washington did.

Lincoln did.

FDR did.

Will Obama? I mean, the website says, “President-elect Barack Obama will take the oath of office, which states . . .” and then gives the text. Why not note “so help me God.” It is, though not in the constitution, as much a part of the oath as “I do solemnly swear” given the history of the words.

Will Barack Obama conclude his oath with “so help me God”?

Some weeks ago, RedState asked the candidates for RNC Chairman to provide some responses to ten issues we’re deeply interested in. The issues go beyond the need for a spokesman for a party and get to the heart of what the RNC and the RNC Chairman are all about.

Saul Anuzis is the first to respond. What follows is his unedited response:

Thank you for the opportunity to discuss my plan to bring back the GOP. I would encourage you also to download, read and share my Blueprint for a GOP Comeback. Comments and suggestions always are welcome. – Saul Anuzis

1. Please state your qualifications for the job and why those qualifications make you the best choice.

We must be the party that offers hope to all of America. Too many, in our own Party, have lost touch with voters in places like my home state of Michigan, and the Great Lakes states. For a long time, we have written off entire regions like the northeast and the west coast. And now we are beginning to see our party lose ground in the south and the mountain states. It is time to look at the fundamentals and stop focusing only on the tactics. When we are true to our ideals, that message resonates in every corner of America.

It’s time that the Republican Party looked at America through a different set of eyes. I’m not part of the Republican establishment. I wasn’t born and raised a Republican. I joined the Republican Party in my teens because it was the party that reflected my values, hopes and dreams.

As the son of an immigrant who found the American dream in a car factory in Detroit, Michigan, I know that the American dream is still alive – in every coal miner, grocery store clerk, hotel maid, school teacher and yes, every auto worker – in every corner of this country. And you’ll never convince me that Republican ideas cannot win those Americans hearts and minds.

Read More →

I’ll be on with Michael Steele and some liberal babe.

The topics are:

(1) IMPEACHMENT HEARING IN ILLINOIS CONTINUES
(2) GAY LIBERAL ACTIVISTS UPSET AT OBAMA FOR LETTING RICK WARREN GIVE THE INVOCATION AT THE INAUGURATION
(3) CAROLINE KENNEDY NOT EXACTLY HAVING A HONEYMOON WITH THE PRESS

If you have anything on these, let me know.

I’ll be on right at 9pm.

Wikipedia tells us that Caroline Kennedy actually never changed her name to Schlossberg after she got married. That has not stopped the media from referring to Her Majesty as Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg until now.

Now, the media, in its never ending quest to rebuild Camelot, is in full Kennedy mode. Obama is, I’m sure, a bit upset the spotlight is off him.

The American public has, for a year, been treated to a media narrative that experience counts for everything. Sarah Palin was unqualified to preside as President of the United States Senate because she did not have experience — never mind that she is Governor of the largest state. She was not qualified to cast tie breaking votes in the Senate. That is, after all, the Vice President’s job.

But today is a new day. Caroline Kennedy (Schlossberg) is qualified to be a United States Senator because . . . . .

Because why really? Because of her last name? Kennedy equals experience? No. Not hardly. What exactly has Caroline Kennedy done to make herself qualified?

She has not started any businesses. She . . . ohhhh . . . she’s the honorary chairman of the American Ballet Theatre and raises private money for public causes.

Gotcha. Oh, and she’s a writer and editor. That makes her a very serious person, unlike Sarah Palin who, as just a lowly governor with no royal blood, is unserious.

Were the media allowed to pick a monarchy for America, it’d be the Kennedys. And the media would tell the rest of us it’s what America wants. But real America wants people who have actually done something with their lives to be in positions of prominence. Rising above a silver spoon background to a silver dinner plate does not qualify. Except maybe in New York.

Reality sometimes necessitates jumping back into your life at times. I have two lives though and they have not, despite my best intentions, merged very well. There is the life there at home with the wife and children and the life here at RedState, which has, for the past year, been all consuming.

In these past few weeks, I have mostly been absorbed in my other life — the one with a new baby, a loving wife, and the sweetest three year old on earth. Neil has done yeoman’s work here keeping the lights on and upgrading. Between the baby and then promptly getting sick, I haven’t been as engaged as I’d otherwise be. Ironically, I was more engaged on RedState last Tuesday while we are the hospital than since. But it is all understandable.

This is all to say, I feel I’ve been neglecting you guys. I haven’t been able to pay attention as much. The nice thing about this site is that I can now get comments to my posts emailed to me, but they’ve piled up.

So, consider this an open thread. If you want my attention for some reason, some idea, have some complaint, etc. here’s your chance. I promise I’ll read every comment to this post.

Billy Graham is pretty much dead. It’s not nice to say, but there you have it. Franklin does not have the same star power that his dad does and, besides, they’re Protestants so a hereditary Protestant Pope is not Franklin’s to claim.

Therefore, there is an opening for American Protestant Pope and Rick Warren covets the title. He wants to be the moral voice of the moral majority the way Graham used to be and he has a bigger ego to boot. So he’s happy to lay his hands on the new President and have the media give him the legitimacy the media once gave Billy Graham. That the new President is a proponent of infanticide is irrelevant to his resume.

Win – win. He’s not compromising his principles. He’s just giving legitimacy to get legitimacy.

And unlike Billy Graham, Rick Warren is fully committed to the pro-life cause.

P.S. – It also really does hack off all the right people. Much like the LaHood pick will when people remember he sat in the Speaker’s Chair presiding over Clinton’s impeachment.

P.P.S. – Unfortunately, I find Rick Warren insufferable. He’s a book salesman more than an evangelist and does not have the life experiences Graham had that taught Graham humility.

Thanks to everyone who gave me input. I got Christy the Remington 870 for her birthday/Christmas. I wanted the Mossberg 500, but everyone was sold out till after Christmas, so the Remington it is.

Her birthday is tomorrow. I took Evelyn with me to get it and she couldn’t wait to get home and tell her mom all about “Mommy’s big gun.”

So there ya have it. Thanks for the help.

– Erick

PS – Consider this an open thread.

Did you read the “poor people” story in the media? You know, the one about the parents who tried to get a birthday cake for their three year old and no supermarket would give them one. They wound up having to go to Walmart for a cake. All the local places turned them away like the inn keeper tossing Mary out, forcing her to go to the manger.

The tragedy has been circulating for days. Except that it’s not a tragedy. The dad is a damn freak who should have his kids taken away from him for ruining their lives and the mother and father should be dragged into the street, tied to stakes, and beaten.

This is disgusting.

The father of 3-year-old Adolf Hitler Campbell, denied a birthday cake with the child’s full name on it by one New Jersey supermarket, is asking for a little tolerance. Heath Campbell and his wife, Deborah, are upset not only with the decision made by the Greenwich ShopRite, but with an outpouring of angry Internet postings in response to a local newspaper article over the weekend on their flare-up over frosting.

“I think people need to take their heads out of the cloud they’ve been in and start focusing on the future and not on the past,” Heath Campbell said Tuesday in an interview conducted in Easton, on the other side of the Delaware River from where the family lives in Hunterdon County, N.J.

What the hell is wrong with these people? In addition to little Adolph Hitler who’ll probably graduate at 11 from killing puppies to killing his parents (a rich irony no less), the couple has two other neo-nazis, “JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell turns 2 in a few months and Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell will be 1 in April.”

I have no sympathy for a–holes and morons. I have loads of sympathy for the children, but the parents have no right to complain about the injustice of ShopRite given the injustice they’ve done to their kids.

Jennifer Rubin notes the language change in Obama’s explanations about his involvement in the Blagojevich scandal. He has gone from “I” to “We”, or at least he is trying to shift it, unless it is a royal “we”.

Here’s the transition team’s statement:

the President-elect’s staff was not involved in inappropriate discussions with the governor or his staff

Here is Obama’s December 9th statement:

we were not — I was not aware of what was happening.

Here is Obama’s December 11th statement:

I have never spoken with the Governor on this subject. And I am quite confident that no representatives of mine would have had any part in any deals related to this seat.

How exactly was he “not aware of what was happening” when his Chief of Staff was talking to Blago about acceptable picks? And he did know about the federal investigation, didn’t he?

Likewise, that Obama has decided to dump the contents of his dealings with Blago on the press during the week of Christmas, instead of this week, suggests he hopes the story will get buried. What exactly is in there that he wants to bury? We’ll see.

A great many of you have either emailed or posted comments in the “Gunnar” thread saying you wanted to make a gift to a charity in honor of Gunnar’s birth.

Whether you want to for that or you are just feeling charitable, I have a suggestion.

As you know, Sarah Palin’s church was torched. It looks to be arson, though they aren’t sure yet. The damage is in excess of $1 million. I’m sure they have insurance, but I’m sure they also need the help.

Whether you want to make a gift for Gunnar or for any other reason, consider sending a check to Wasilla Bible Church.

Share the Christmas spirit and contribute to rebuilding the church.

You know, there is nothing wrong with a protest. There is nothing wrong with a boycott. But hounding people out of work, harassing people who refuse to go along with the boycott, etc. crosses a line that should not be crossed.

In the latest escapade of the gay reich movement, the Los Angeles Times chronicles the fall of El Coyote. The Times notes

Margie Christoffersen was a manager at El Coyote, the Beverly Boulevard landmark restaurant that’s always had throngs of customers waiting to get inside. Many of them were gay, and Christoffersen, a devout Mormon, donated $100 in support of Proposition 8, the successful November ballot initiative that banned gay marriage.

She never advertised her politics or religion in the restaurant, but last month her donation showed up on lists of “for” and “against” donors. And El Coyote became a target.

A boycott was organized on the Internet, with activists trashing El Coyote on restaurant review sites. Then came throngs of protesters, some of them shouting “shame on you” at customers. The police arrived in riot gear one night to quell the angry mob.

Ironically, as El Coyote fails, its employees, many of whom are gay, are out of work in a down economy. One of those employees put it best:

“You can express yourself as a citizen,” said Archila. “Not everyone has to believe the same things.”

No Mr. Archila. You can’t. Not as long as the gay rights movement operates as a Gay Reich Movement.

Speaker of the Illinois House, Mike Madigan, abruptly shut down the Illinois House yesterday to avoid a vote on having a special election to fill Barack Obama’s unexpired Senate term.

Madigan’s daughter was on the “acceptable” list of people Blago and Obama agreed to.

Madigan wants his daughter to have a chance and would rather let a corrupt Governor or his flunky Pat Quinn appoint Obama’s replacement than leave it up to the people to decide.

Why? The people are more than a little hacked off with the Democrats in Illinois and Mark Kirk is considering a run. Kirk is a very popular Republican in Illinois. He’s to the left of most here on social issues, but he wins his Chicago area district consistently getting a demographic of voters the GOP lusts after.

Madigan and the Democratic establishment in Illinois want no part of Kirk. So they’ll let the new Senator be appointed under a cloud of corruption and suspicion. That’s a safer bet than letting the people decide.

In today’s world of moral relativism, the media frequently reverses labels and agendas. Good men are made the villain. Villains are made good men. Heros are made traitors and traitors are made heros.

After spending thousands of words to claim God is a proponent of gay marriage, Newsweek works hard to paint a traitor as a hero.

Meet Thomas Tamm. Mr. Tamm is the man who leaked to the New York Times the foreign surveillance program the media dubbed “warrantless wiretaps.”

The program, mischaracterized by the media and Mr. Tamm, listened in on foreigners calling foreigners whose calls were routed through the United States. In some cases calls were monitored that ended in the United States. The purpose of the program was to gather intelligence on foreign terrorist activities.

Revelations of the program by the media significantly impacted its effectiveness. According to people inside the Bush administration, the effectiveness of intelligence gathering against the enemy was impacted after the New York Times leaked the existence of the program.

Mr. Tamm is to blame. As Newsweek notes

Tamm concedes he was also motivated in part by his anger at other Bush-administration policies at the Justice Department, including its aggressive pursuit of death-penalty cases and the legal justifications for “enhanced” interrogation techniques that many believe are tantamount to torture.

Mr Tamm did not like John Ashcroft. He did not like rendition. In fact, if you plow through the Newsweek article, you’ll find that Mr. Tamm did not much care for the War on Terror at all. So he decided to undermine it.

A media, willing to aid and abet Al Qaeda, seized on the story, badly mischaracterized what the NSA was doing, and tipped off the nation’s enemies about the program.

Neither the media nor Mr. Tamm have any regrets. And now the media will paint the traitor a hero. He fits the media narrative of standing up to the man — damn the consequences. But we should remember him as Tamm the Traitor — he put a personal agenda ahead of the nation’s security.

When Evelyn was an infant we noticed she had a thing for music. In particular, whenever she heard “Carol of the Bells” she froze in her tracks, regardless of what she was doing, and spontaneously would start shaking. The shaking became dancing. The dancing became laughing. It was like clock work.

Even now at age 3, she does the same thing with “Carol of the Bells.”

When she was two, I captured it on camera. It is something to behold. She’s digging through stuff in our bedroom and then hears the music. The dancing takes over.

Jay Carney, Time Magazine’s D.C. Bureau Chief, will become Communications Director for Joe Biden.

The Politico sums it up best, writing

Carney, a Yale graduate, is known as a middle-of-the-road, well-connected journalist with establishment instincts.

Earlier this year, I noted Carney was willing to buy into the left-wing rhetoric that Rush Limbaugh and right wing bloggers started the Michelle Obama “Whitey Tape” rumor, when it was in fact pro-Hillary Clinton left-wing bloggers who had done so.

Jay was kind enough to note the left-wing origins after I posted.

Here’s the thing folks: Jay Carney is an awesome reporter. He always played it middle of the road and tried to get both sides, but his biases were always to the left.

The point here is this: have any major reporters gone on to work for Republicans? The left likes to use Tony Snow as their example, but of course Tony was a well known conservative and Republican, having guest hosted for Rush Limbaugh for a number of years.

But who in the mainstream media ever goes to the Republicans? Linda Douglass of ABC News went with Obama. Carney is going with Biden. What about ABC’s Claire Shipman, Carney’s wife? Do you really think she’s going to cover the political beat fairly with her husband working for Biden? I doubt it.

Jay Carney is a good guy. He’ll serve Biden well in what will be a position of little influence in a small corner of oblivion. He is not the first. He won’t be the last. He’s just another example of the mainstream media showing its bias against conservatives.

I will miss his coverage at Time. Its always sad to see a good guy turn hack.

The Illinois Republican Party is getting aggressive when it comes to the Senate selection in Illinois, and they have a great point: the whole structure of Democratic alliances in Illinois make any appointment by either the Governor or the Lt. Governor suspect.

As the ILGOP notes:

Today FriendsofBlago.com unveiled the tainted connection Lt. Governor Pat Quinn has to Rod Blagojevich. In 2006, Pat Quinn said he saw nothing wrong with Blagojevich’s 7 year-old daughter receiving a $1,500 check from a family friend whose wife had just obtained a state job.

According to Kristen McQueary of the Southtown Star: “As recently as October 2006, after Tony Rezko’s indictment, Quinn was out stumping for Blagojevich. He held news conferences attacking Republican gubernatorial candidate Judy Baar Topinka. He said he believed Blagojevich did nothing wrong, despite the Rezko indictment.”

“We cannot trust Rod Blagojevich’s Lieutenant Governor to make the right decision when it comes to choosing our next senator,” said McKenna. “The people of Illinois deserve to have a say in this selection.”

Check out the web of corruption here.