President-Elect Barack Obama has tossed Republicans another softball with his New Deal scale infrastructure proposal.

Originally published by Mike gamecock DeVine as Legal Editor for The Minority Report

We mostly whiffed at the “pre-packaged” bankruptcy trial balloon pitch for Detroit’s Big Three and missed an opportunity to divide the Democrats.

We must not take strike two.

This is a “public” works proposal. Government is responsible for building and maintaining roads and bridges. Yes, we know that Keynesian style public works spending didn’t end the Great Depression. And yes, Obama’s rhetoric hints at perpetuating that myth while suggesting that this 21st Century version of FDR’s WPA would end the current recession.

But great works were constructed under FDR (see Hoover Dam pictured) and Republicans would make a grave mistake if they lead with an argument opposing infrastructure spending. No, the GOP must support accelerated spending of this kind during this economic crisis and insist that the crisis requires that environmental trial lawyers must not be allowed to delay the hiring of workers.

Obama is arguing 24/7 that he wants to put Americans to work. Let’s force him to choose between trial lawyers and blue collar workers, shall we? Let’s challenge Obama to not let the Endangered Species, Clean Water and any other acts prevent putting Americans back to work.

Fellow conservatives, can we talk? We know that the main stimulus we need is a supply side tax and regulation reduction that unleashes Liberty-empowered Americans to bail themselves out, but we also need to maintain the infrastructure and given the economic facts, there is every reason to accelerate the process.

So why not use this as an opportunity to highlight the left wing kook ownership of the Democratic Party in the process?

Will recession ravaged Americans have the patience to abide orange cones on the highways guarding only equipment and unfilled holes while lawyers litigate the effect on polar bears this winter, while human beings settle for extended unemployment benefits?

I think not.

Majority leaders McConnell and Boehner, do you see that fat, high curve ball?

Swing for the fences.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Originally published by Mike “gamecock” DeVine as Charlotte Law and Civil Rights Examiner for Examiner.com

In the wake of the discovery that students had painted racist messages on the campus “free speech” graffiti tunnel walls, UNC President Erskine Boyles is asking a commission to study whether the university has an adequate code of conduct. Apparently, some people were bothered by seeing the N-word emblazoned near Tar Heel blue.

Apparently, some people were also “bothered” by the sight of Christmas trees at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill campus where President Boyles works, as well, as Christmas trees have been banned from its two main libraries for the first time in four centuries. What about those that are bothered by not seeing the trees? Must they await Arbor Day?

Democrat Boyles, former Chief of Staff for President Bill Clinton, has asked no commission to study this matter. Rather, he sent the associate provost for university libraries out to report that Duke, N.C. State, nor colleagues “elsewhere” were displaying Christmas trees and that:

We strive in our collection to have a wide variety of ideas. It doesn’t seem right to celebrate one particular set of customs.(Especially not the one being celebrated in the photo at right in the particular nation within which UNC is located?)*

Apparently it does “seem right” to collect racist musing in pedestrian tunnels for students to gaze upon, but Christmas is not considered part of a “wide variety of ideas.”

These are the people in charge of “higher” learning?

Given academia’s now four decades long aversion to tolerance for the celebration of religious diversity unless extremist adherents of a particular religion threaten lynchings for cartoon depictions of its prophet; let’s teach dispensers of this higher learning a lesson:

Caleb Howe, Charlotte Political Examiner reminds that Christmas is more than just a religious holiday:

Christmas is a federal holiday. It’s also a secular holiday in addition to being religious. Christmas is a cultural tradition in the United States, yet these groups, who often lay claim to being sensitive to people’s cultures, dismiss the notion on its face. The one type of tradition or culture which Americans may feel free to attack or purge is American tradition and culture.

This is not the usual case of a federal judge scrutinizing nativity displays at a courthouse or purging the name of Christ from carols sung by grammar schoolers for his birthday. God’s name has long been treated the same as obscenity by court decisions addressing local public school curricula since the 1960’s supreme court decisions banning prayer and bible reading.

No, this is a case of voluntary action by the people that “educate” judges that make such decisions. At least in public schools they ban racist taunts.

At universities in the Tar Heel State, commissions still must weigh in before they would dare ban the n-word, but Christmas is banned, period.

Damn the commissions.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

* Charlotte Observer link to December 5 story was malfunctioning when this story went to press.

In the aftermath India’s “911”, the world’s largest democracy could learn a few things from the world’s oldest.

Originally published by Mike gamecock DeVine as Legal Editor for The Minority Report

A combination of roundups of visa overstays from Muslim countries in the weeks immediately following 911; elimination of nation-state sponsored safe havens; foreign and domestic surveillance; and war against Taliban, Wahhabist, Baathist, Iranian Shia, and other Islamist enemies of civilization over seas, including the killing of tens of thousands and aggressive interrogation of such enemies by the armed forces led by their President George W. Bush as Commander-in-Chief has kept the American homeland safe for seven anniversaries of The 911.

Like President Bush in the immediate aftermath of the attacks on New York and Washington, India’s leader has confronted Pakistan with ultimatums. General Pervez Musharref, a former ally of Afghanistan’s al Qaeda harboring government, accepted a U.S. offer he couldn’t refuse.

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Originally published by Mike gamecock DeVine as Legal Editor for The Minority Report

Many of the terminally ill that are diagnosed in time; physically fit to travel; and able to liquidate large amounts of their assets, cash in their pensions and throw one last blow out party before the Grim Reaper arrives. Some even take world tours and resort to risk-taking criminal behavior, given that either a life or death sentence would not be executed beyond the one already meted out by Mother Nature.

This is especially true of those without progeny to whom one’s treasure can be devised and bequeathed. All the better true if one can exact revenge against a long time nemesis.

Much of the press mistook Putin’s brazen Olympian exit for Beijing as Russian tanks rolled into Ossetian Georgia on behalf of the aggressor, as well as his warships’ maiden tour of the Lake that TR built as signs of a re-emergence of a strong Bear after a long hibernation. As usual, a Drive-By media, dying for stories to make a Republican Commander-in-Chief of America look bad, gets it wrong.

Putin’s Russia is dying, and many times those that haven’t lived well, die even worse.

Hence, the din of post-Georgian overreach, oil revenue-starved, nuclear proliferating, Russian warship, death rattle echoes off Panamanian canal walls.

Clearly, the world should be gravely concerned that Putin’s Russia has turned into Wal-Mart for oil-rich, terrorist-sponsoring rogue states planning for the day they run out of fossil fuels in the 22nd Century but still need to turn on a light bulb. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall we have been working to prevent nuclear materials in the former Soviet Union from falling into the hands of terrorists and their sponsors. Yet, Russia is doing much more proliferating in plain view what we feared might be done via theft or subterfuge.

Russia’s economy under near-Tsar Vladimir has been a basket case most of the past decade, interrupted briefly during the oil price run-up. It is absent even a basket since oil prices dropped and the U.S. economy caught cold and gave the world pneumonia.

The Drive-Bys and “realists” warned of a rejuvenated Russia and blamed it on a beach volleyball cheering Bush in Beijing. We heard that Russia would take Tbilisi and intimidate Poland, Ukraine and the Baltics from their NATO coziness given memories of tanks in their streets as they watched them roll in Ossetias, north and south, and given the energy pipeline with an off spigot. Instead, Russia is busy walling itself off, literally, from the west.

But the dying need money from oil or reactor sales to fund the penultimate oligarchical ball. And their neighbors, didn’t miss a beat getting all their leaders down to Georgia with Condi Rice with American warships in the harbors and aircraft on the runways. Finally, for the first time since Bobby Fischer to Boris Spassky, an American could say “Checkmate!” to a Russian.

Not even a Biden predicted generated crisis by a post-Election day Medvedev threat to put missiles near an SDI contracting Poland can hide the overreach. Bush dispatched his Secretary of State to seal the Polish Star Wars premier.

Russia poses a danger, but the danger is from a position of weakness, not strength. The only chance their much reduced military had of re-parking outside their present borders was if an American president were intimidated.

President George W. Bush was not intimidated.

It will be up to the new President to deal with the “commercial purpose” nuclear store in Moscow, but, compared to the American warships in Georgian ports that exposed Russian overreach, theirs in Venezuelan ports and Panama’s Canal barely broke waves.

Take note Mr. President-Elect, because the sounds of dogs that don’t bark, and bears that don’t growl are the lullaby that will let you sleep well past 3am.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Just when you think the civil right to keep the fruits of your labor is safe from elected Democrats, here come the local ink by the barrel buying-liberals playing the class warfare card.

Originally published by our Legal Editor, Mike “gamecock” DeVine as Charlotte Law and Civil Rights Examiner for Examiner.com

The Examiner reported Mecklenburg County Manager Harry Jones’ statement last week that he doubted five of the nine county commissioners would vote to reassess property tax values early next year given the unstable, inflated property values that could result is tax assessments many homeowners could not afford.

It appears that the Charlotte Observer (known affectionately here as The Charlotte Disturber) is disturbed:

As Mecklenburg County commissioners consider whether to delay assigning new tax values to properties, some lessons could be learned from a debate that unfolded this fall about 130 miles away. After voting in October to delay a revaluation for a year, Chatham County leaders changed their minds when they determined it would cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost revenue from utility companies, as well as the expense of reappraising property.

Yes, there are lessons to be learned, but, as usual, our liberal friends haven’t yet learned them.

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Fifty-eight and counting for the Democratic Party in the United States Senate, and should incumbent Republican Saxby Chambliss lose to Jim Martin on this Tuesday’s run-off election, only one Republican vote would be required to invoke cloture to end filibusters.

A President Barack Obama and the Democrats in Congress would have a blank check to enact most all of their legislative dreams of the past forty years, and, given the economic crisis, pass it all off as “stimulus” no matter how fundamental the changes the new laws may effect.

This column is an update to our front pager last week which suggested that Jim Martin was on his own, as far as getting any personal help on the ground from the President-Elect.

It remains the case that Obama will not take the “Coverdell” challenge and repeat the mistake made by then President-Elect Bill Clinton in his 1992 appearances in a previous Peach State run-off when Republican Paul Coverdell defeated then incumbent Democrat Wyche Fowler.

However, Obama did make a radio ad touting Martin as favoring his legislative agenda; Donna Brazile reported on ABC’s This Week Sunday show that all 20+ Obama campaign offices remain open; and that Obama supporters in adjoining states have been encouraged by text message to come help turn out the vote.

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Property rights ought to trump second-hand smoke, but it may be politicians love for tax revenues that snuff out power plays by non-smokers to impose smoking bans in restaurants.

Originally published by Mike “gamecock” DeVine as Charlotte Law and Civil Rights Examiner for Examiner.com

“It’s not about personal freedoms. It’s not about businesses’ property rights. This is a health issue bill.”

That was House Majority Leader Hugh Holliman’s final plea for a statewide smoking ban bill that was voted down 55-61 by the North Carolina House last year. The question is will Holliman and his fellow Democrats in Raleigh and Charlotte, emboldened by the recent election results, try again to limit private property rights.

Tobacco sales are up this year and history tells us that Americans seek more solace in smoke and drink during economic downturns. Revenues for other tax sources go down as revenues from Marlboros and martinis go up.

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