Chris Christie’s fights with the teachers’ unions in New Jersey have been well documented in the national press and conservative blogosphere.  However, Christie has been engaged in another, possibly more significant fight over reforming the New Jersey Supreme Court that has, until now received relatively scant amounts of national attention. As detailed in the New York Times and the WSJ ($), the fight erupted in May when Christie exercised his (admittedly seldom-used) prerogative to not re-appoint the liberal John E. Wallace to the New Jersey State Supreme Court. 

As we have seen all too often at both the State and Federal level, liberals view the judiciary as a useful tool to undo anything they don’t like which is done by the legislature or, in this case, the governor. Therefore, Christie’s (absolutely legal) attempts to change the composition of the court were seen as a direct threat to their most sacred institution. Accordingly, the New Jersey Senate, led by Democrat Stephen Sweeney, refused to allow a vote to confirm Anne Patterson, Christie’s nominee to replace Wallace. Thus far everything that had occurred in this fight could be chalked up to political posturing.

However, New Jersey Supreme Court Chief Justice Stuart Rabner then took a step which raised the specter of possible coordination between Rabner and Sweeney by unconstitutionally elevating Edwin Stern, a Court of Appeals judge to the New Jersey Supreme Court (thus bypassing Christie’s right to nominate the next appointee, and the Senate’s vote on confirmation of that nominee), despite the fact that the New Jersey Supreme Court had a five-member quorum even in Wallace’s absence.  This naked power grab was so appalling that McGreevey appointee Justice Roberto Rivera-Soto stunned observers on Friday by noting, at the end of a published opinion, that he would be abstaining from all decisions as long as Stern remained on the Court.  Now, as highlighted above, the national media is starting to take notice of this incredible story as it plays out in New Jersey.

In typically Orwellian fashion, the New Jersey Democrats have accused Christie throughout the process of playing politics with the Court. Justice Rivera-Soto has exposed very plainly that it is really Sweeney (working hand in hand with Rabner) and the rest of the New Jersey Democrats who are playing politics with Justice.

Many who are watching Christie with a view towards a possible Presidential run in 2012 or 2016 have some concerns about Christie on socially conservative issues. If Gov. Christie displays a willingness to fight for conservative judicial nominees with the same fervor that he fights against corrupt unions, that would go a long way towards allaying all those fears. Let’s hope that Christie does the right thing, and shows the way to the slough of new GOP governors who were elected this year.

It’s been quite a week for American’s most execrable Congressman. Apparently not content to definitively and irrevocably align himself with enemies of America, Ron Paul has decided to make sure everyone knows that he is the only Member of Congress not opposed to brutal totalitarianism. As in, literally the only one – from Pence to Pelosi, every member of the House (other than Paul) voted to honor Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, and Pelosi is even making plans to visit the Nobel ceremony personally. Pelosi’s support for Xiaobo has led to the unprecedented event of Nancy Pelosi being praised on the front page of RedState.

Over at Hot Air, Allahpundit does a magnificent job of obliterating every one of the moronic arguments that are usually trotted out in defense of Paul’s votes on resolutions like these. As Allah notes, it can’t be because Paul believes these resolutions are a waste of money, because he votes all the time in favor of equally meaningless resolutions honoring sports teams and the like.  It can’t be because he is generally opposed to resolutions that meddle in foreign internal affairs, because he has certainly done that before as well:

If he’s opposed on principle to meaningless House resolutions, how come he voted yes on this one during the summer to honor golfer Chi Chi Rodriguez for his contributions to Latino youth programs? And if he’s against telling foreign nations how to conduct their business — even when it comes to standing up for core libertarian values — why’d he vote for this one a few years ago urging Romania to relax its rules on intercountry adoptions? That’s proof enough that he’s not above rhetorically pressuring other countries, but if you need more, you can always revisit his floor speeches and YouTube videos criticizing Israel.

Indeed. So how come when America needs a hero to stand up against wasting money on a resolution honoring Chi Chi Rodriguez (or, you know, research on shrimp marketing), Ron Paul is conspicuously absent, but whenever America wants to send a message that this country stands united in opposition to totalitarianism or terrorism, Ron Paul suddenly decides to become a principled libertarian and pennypincher? It’s almost as though one could assume without fear of being faced with evidence to the contrary that Ron Paul’s allegedly principled and “quirky” beliefs are really a fig leaf to cover the obvious fact that Ron Paul is far more sympathetic to totalitarians and terrorists than he is to his own country.

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To be fair, when Ron Paul said yesterday that it was completely awesome that Julian Assange was spreading our classified secrets across the internet for the entire world to see, he probably couldn’t have foreseen that the information would contain this:

A long list of key facilities around the world that the US describes as vital to its national security has been released by Wikileaks.

The US State Department in February 2009 asked all US missions abroad to list all installations whose loss could critically affect US national security.

The list includes pipelines, communication and transport hubs.

I mean, who could have possibly predicted that the leaking of classified diplomatic cables would lead to the disclosure of information that terrorists could use to get the most bang for their buck? Apparently not Ron Paul, who has actually gone so far as to make requests for what the next leak of classified information should be.

As to the substance of Paul’s argument, absolutely no one is arguing that Assange ought to be criminally prosecuted for treason, for the painfully obvious reason that Paul himself pointed out; one cannot be a traitor to a country of which one is not a citizen. Quite a few people have suggested that Assange ought to be prosecuted as a lawbreaker – or better yet, summarily executed as a spy, because that is what Assange is. But the fact that Assange is not guilty of treason is not a good reason for a sitting Member of Congress to solicit attacks on America’s infrastructure. Unless, of course, the Congressman in question’s reflexive lodestar is the destruction of America, which seems to be more or less the case when it comes to Ron Paul.

Apparently some folks were upset by my suggestion yesterday that it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if Julian Assange were to find a small caliber bullet in his cranial cavity. I say “apparently” because, if this post from Mediaite is any indication, it’s really hard to tell when these people are actually exercised about something. I had always wondered what Rush meant when he referred to “the two-inch crowd”; now I know.

We also got quite a lot of scolding-disapproval mail, such as this one from a Canadian who apparently (seriously) “has a background in tree planting“:

From: “colman.hogan@utoronto.ca” <colman.hogan@utoronto.ca>

Date: December 1, 2010 4:31:42 PM EST

To: “contact@redstate.com” <contact@redstate.com>

Subject: Serious issue

Lexington_Concord’s suggestion that Assange ought to be assassinated 
is inflamatory and does little to advance debate about this serious 
issue. Assassination is a crime and encouraging assination is … 
well, assinine.

“my preferred course of action would for Assange to find a small 
caliber round in the back of his head.”

And again:

From: Steve Roman <saroman0414@gmail.com>

Date: December 1, 2010 7:57:40 PM EST

To: “contact@redstate.com” <contact@redstate.com>

Subject: Just wondering

…how an anti-American piece of s*** like lexington_concord gets a public forum.

The unspoken assumption behind the impotent carping of our illiterate two-inch crowd friends is that suggesting that Assange should be killed in order to prevent further devastating leaks of sensitive information is beyond the pale. Reasonable people should of course not discuss it in polite company.

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One would expect, in the wake of the incalculable damage done to America’s diplomatic position in the world by WikiLeaks’ revelation of illegally-obtained diplomatic cables, that condemnation of WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange would be nearly universal among everyone who is not openly rooting for the demise of America. And indeed, when Oliver Willis steps off America-hating bus (see here, here, here, and here) then you know that it is carrying a very light load indeed.

However, a small but determined band of morally vapid internet commentators are so blinded by their desire to see America fail that they cannot see that it is a bad thing for both America and the world at large for secret diplomatic cables to be spilled out into the public. These individuals generally fall into two camps.

The first more or less consists of professional America-hater Glenn Greenwald and his many sock puppets.  The Glenns go beyond defending Assange and WikiLeaks; they think Pfc. Bradley Manning (the alleged leaker of the documents) is a hero who should be lauded, and Assange is only to be blamed for not being heroic enough to murder several dozen American soldiers in order to steal the information himself.  Thankfully, Glenn speaks for no one on this issue other than his Internet alter-egos, so we need not concern ourselves with his “arguments,” which may be summarized thusly: Manning and Assange have harmed the United States, therefore what they did was both good and legal. QED.

However, a second group, typified by pseudo-libertarian Doug Mataconis (who has been busy lately trying to earn his America-hating Merit Badge at Greenwald’s feet), has apparently realized that defending Manning does not cut ice with people who don’t already hate America, and so they have apparently decided to mount a tenuous and laughable defense of Assange based on supposed legal technicalities. Mataconis and others like him have argued on twitter and elsewhere all day that a) WikiLeaks did not substantively break any laws, and b) even if they committed an act in violation of U.S. law, since WikiLeaks’ servers are outside United States jurisdiction, by definition this does not amount to a violation or U.S. law. Or something. The basic gist of this argument is that Assange is just a reporter publishing some stuff someone happened to give him and there’s nothing illegal about that.

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Last week the smut-peddlers at Gawker.com introduced us all to Pete and Alisha Arnold. Alisha Arnold is apparently 17 weeks pregnant, and the Arnolds have allegedly decided to let the Internet vote on whether Alisha will carry their son to full term or abort him. I say “allegedly” because I am fairly skeptical of whether the Arnolds intend to follow through with their plan. In fairness, the Arnolds have left themselves a pretty substantial loophole, declaring essentially that they have veto power over the Internet poll. This seems to be fairly transparent way of saying that the Arnolds will check the results of the poll and then do whatever their hearts desire.

To my mind, the question of whether this episode is a hoax or publicity stunt is quite beside the point. What ought to concern us more are the hordes of American citizens voting in the Arnolds’ poll and publicly obsessing over their gratuitous display of moral vacillation.

In 1998, Peter Weir’s eerily prescient move The Truman Show portrayed a world fascinated with a “reality” television show which followed every move of the show’s protagonist, Truman Burbank. Of course, the crux of the movie was that almost everything about Truman’s world was a complete sham; from the city he lived in (which was actually an elaborately constructed and carefully controlled set inside of a giant dome) to all his friends and family (played by actors). Everything about Truman’s world was fake except for Truman, who was blissfully unaware (until the movie’s end) that his whole life had been played out on live television. Eventually, when Truman discovered that his life was a sham, he determined to break out of the prison that held him, and came to a final confrontation with the show’s creator, the reclusive “Christof,” who attempted to convince Truman to stay on the set and continue his life as the star of the world’s largest show. In anguish, Truman asked Christof, “Was any of it real?” To which Christof replied, “You were, Truman. That’s what made you so great to watch.”

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It is a sincerely regrettable fact that less than three weeks after a monumental election for the GOP we have found it necessary to repeatedly engage in fratricide with some of our whilom coalition partners. However, some of some of our libertarian brethren have been feeling their oats since the election and have taken to throwing around wild and unsupported ipse dixits about how they won the election all by their lonesome and if the GOP wants to win in 2012 it better throw all the ugsome social conservatives under the bus where they belong. It is important to realize that they brought the fight to us; social conservatives did not stand up after the election and loudly proclaim 2010 as a referendum on abortion and declare that everyone who wants to talk about the flat tax or social security reform should sit down and shut up.

We have already addressed that this contention is completely unsupported by, you know, facts. Erick has also written a great piece about the folly of the argument as a philosophical matter. I think it is necessary to point out, however, that the suggestion that social issues did not play a role in the GOP’s victories this year is also completely untrue.

What libertarians conveniently forget is that abortion – particularly taxpayer funding of abortion – was a huge issue in the fight over Obamacare. In fact, it threatened to derail the entire legislation and a number of blue dogs insisted on language (which came to be known as the Stupak Amendment) to protect their backside in a number of districts where they knew taxpayer funding of abortion (which is broadly opposed nationwide) would not ultimately cost them their jobs. However, when the Stupak Amendment threatened to unravel the Democrats’ reconciliation end-run around the filibuster, the White House applied massive pressure to the Blue Dogs and they caved.

Pro-life organizations such as the Susan B. Anthony List and Americans United for Life pounced, attacking the Blue Dogs with multi-million dollar ad campaigns, billboards targeting vulnerable democrats for their vote in favor of taxpayer-funded abortion, grassroots tours, and radio ads. Ultimately, 15 of the 20 Democrats targeted by the Susan B. Anthony List lost and 11 of the 12 Democrats targeted by Americans United for Life lost (as a side note, I would encourage pro-life conservatives to consider either organization for donations if you want to donate to effective pro-life activism. The NRLC crapped the bed on the Obamacare bill, and SBA List and AUL got it right).

The point, however, is that to suggest that abortion played no role in GOP victories is deeply dishonest. It’s just as dishonest as viewing the elections as vindication of hardcore libertarianism. Politics is a complicated business and although everyone likes to pretend that elections went a certain way because voters across the nation suddenly believe in all their issues, it’s seldom true. Although abortion without a doubt was not the biggest issue on election day, there is no doubt that it made a measurable difference in a number of key races, and that social conservative activists played a key role – as they always do – in Republican victory.

At the outset, I should note that we are generally fans of FreedomWorks, Dick Armey and Matt Kibbe.  We have featured Kibbe’s work on the front page of RedState before.  But less than 24 hours after the most significant election for Republicans in this generation, Kibbe opened his mouth and let some uninformed and insulting commentary fall out, essentially blaming Ken Buck’s loss in Colorado on “social issues.”

Of course, the most immediate point to be made about this analysis is that it is completely unsupported by any concrete evidence whatsoever.  The second obvious point is that it ignores everything that, you know, actually happened in the Colorado Senate race, including the Dan Maes meltdown (coupled with a very strong Dem candidate in Hickenlooper), and the media explosion and attack ads surrounding Buck’s handling of the infamous rape case which could not be adequately answered because of the NRSC’s decision to waste several million additional dollars in California.  This is not to mention the total absence of effective GOTV in Colorado.

However, the most important point is that Kibbe’s remarks – which are mere echoes of similar remarks from Dick Armey prior to the election – are just the latest iteration of the tired canard always trotted out by libertarians that social conservatives are dragging down the coalition and ought to move to the back of the bus and sit quietly while the libertarians win elections.  It is stupid, false, and insulting, and a completely unnecessary own-goal just hours after a major post-election high.

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Like a lot of people, during the debate over Obamacare, I struggled to keep up with what was in the various different versions and forms of the bill that were being debated. Included in “a lot of people” were apparently most members of Congress, especially Nancy Pelosi, who famously quipped (apparently without a hint of irony) that “We have to pass the bill so you can find out what’s in it.”

Today, completely out of the blue two weeks before election day, I got an email from the HR coordinator at my work that pursuant to IRS ruling sparked by Obamacare, over-the-counter drugs will no longer be covered under FSAs and HSAs, which almost everyone at my work has. Now, it turns out that a lot of policy-wonkish people were paying attention to this issue during the Obamacare debate (see here, here, here, and here). I have to tell you, though, that although I am a fairly plugged-in guy, I had no idea this was coming at all until I got the notice from my work.

I wonder how many other people are going to be finding out in the last couple weeks before the election other delightful tidbits like this. Ideally, of course, this is the sort of thing that would have been subjected to a more careful analysis and debate, but in Nancy Pelosi’s judgment, it was better for Congress just to pass the damn bill and let people find out the hard way. Presumably, that’s at least more entertaining at least for the Democrats who passed the bill without reading it themselves.

Ben Domenech interviewed Congressman Paul Broun (R-GA) today and asked him about this very issue. You can download the podcast here; it’s worth a listen. Then, when you go to the polls 18 days from now, remember to ask your coworkers whether they would prefer that Congress be controlled by people like Nancy Pelosi, who think it’s a good idea to pass bills so we can find out what’s in them like this, or people like Paul Broun.

And so, let me be clear: I have concluded that it is in the best interests of the economy to relieve Speaker Pelosi immediately of her command, and feed her to wolverines.

Open thread.