Note the term ‘office’ staff: I’m comfortable in assuming that the general White House staff – the cleaners, cooks, gardeners, handymen, and whatnot – are all careful to make sure that their taxes are paid up. If only because the President clearly won’t protect them. Anyway, Andrew Malcolm has the summary: 36 office staff members owe $833,900 in back taxes. Which, by the way, is only moderately more scandalous on a fiscal level than the fact that, in an economy where everybody else is forced to cut back on jobs, the White House staff has increased to be larger than George W Bush’s, in both personnel and budget terms.

It constantly amazes me – honestly, even after four* years of watching this – how incredibly tin-eared the President is when it comes to this sort of thing. Considering what we did to this administration over tax evasion in 2009… there should be a large sign above every entry security checkpoint in the White House (angled so that it can be only seen from the inside) saying PAY YOUR TAXES, YOU FOOLS. And if Barack Obama had the ability to find and keep a competent Chief of Staff, there might have been. Alas, he does not, and so there is not… and fish rot from the head down.

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This is one of the NRCC‘s harsher web ads… if you define ‘harsh’ as ‘true.’  Something to remember, folks: if you think that campaigning on behalf of Republicans who may or may have not done enough is hard, imagine what it must be like for the netroots, who are all kind of glumly aware that they have to campaign on behalf of Democrats who have done quite too much already.

Text after the fold: open thread.

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If you’ve haven’t taken a look at Gov. O’Malley’s proposed Maryland budget yet, do so – and weep. There’s enough idiocy in it for everybody to get a piece: more taxes for the poor (in the form of increased tobacco taxes*); more taxes for homeowners (caps on mortgage deductions) and other wealthy members of the upper professional class (caps on charitable deductions); and, of course, an Amazon tax (because this time Amazon.com simply won’t drop its affiliate program in Maryland in response, surely**). But here’s the hidden time bomb:

In what O’Malley called one of his most “controversial” proposals, he recommended shifting half of the state’s $946 million tab for teacher pension costs onto the counties.

To help ease the pain of the shift, the state would pick up half of teachers’ Social Security costs, which the counties pay for entirely.

The change would save the state $239 million.

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Sorry about the sound quality: we’re in the middle of a solar storm today, remember? At any rate, I talked this afternoon with Michael Williams, who is running in TX-25, assuming of course that the courts d0n’t decide to fold up the new Congressional maps for Texas into a variety of paper airplanes and fly them out of the window. The short version is: the maps are being contested, a lower court stepped in to get something up and running, the Supreme Court stepped in to smack down said lower court, and now people are kind of worried that the primaries are going to be delayed yet again. As you might have guessed, we talked a bit on the redistricting controversy down there; Michael even took the time to gently correct me on a couple of things that I was getting wrong…

Michael’s site is here.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

Mind you, you wouldn’t know that from the Washington Post’s article on the arrest of John Kiriakou. While the Washington Post – from appearances, somewhat reluctantly – reported that Kiriakou (a former CIA officer and Senate Foreign Affairs staffer) had been arrested for revealing names, operations and investigations to the media back in 2008-2009, the paper completely neglected to mention who Kiriakou ended up working for – which is to say, Senator John Kerry (D, MA). Oddly enough, the Washington Post managed to simultaneous note that “[t]he committee had not been aware of the criminal probe of Kiriakou, according to a former U.S. official familiar with the matter” in its article, while unaccountably mentioning that Kiriakou has been leaking classified information publicly for years – including to the, well, Washington Post. One can only guess why a premiere Left-Establishment paper would be so eager to whitewash the record when it comes to protecting prominent Left-Establishment politicians… like, say, John Kerry, who is the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee (at least until next January)…

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[UPDATE]: Update to this story here. It’s a bit long to just paste onto here, so let me summarize: Sen. Paul is indicating that he was kept in a cubicle for at least an hour and a half and that the TSA turned out not to need him to do a mandatory pat-down after all. To me it sounds like a detention, and I will continue to have a problem with that when it comes to a US Senator.

The Daily Caller reports: the short version is, the TSA in Nashville detained Senator Rand Paul (R, KY) after their body scanner went on the fritz and the Senator refused to submit to a full-body pat-down. Senator Paul was scheduled to speak to March for Life this morning as part of their anniversary rally against Roe v. Wade: it’s now an open question whether he’s going to be able to, now.  As somebody noted to me privately: if this was any other Senator you could reasonably expect grandstanding, but Senator Paul is precisely the sort of person who will stubbornly force the TSA to embarrass itself by detaining a Senator on a matter of personal liberty.  Particularly since Senator Paul’s ongoing opposition to full-body pat-downs is quite well known.

In other words: this is what civil disobedience looks like.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: By the way?  As ABC News is actually pointing out, Senators have the following Constitutionally enumerated right: “They shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same;”(Article I, Section 6).  Senate’s in session today; so let’s see, once and for all, whether Harry Reid’s a true Senator, or just this administration’s lap dog…

Never you mind how said training video was acquired, and/or which campaigns are going to use it to inform their operating methodology: that part’s not important. What’s important is that this is how the next week is going to look, in the run-up to the Florida primary:

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Congresswoman Giffords, of course, was gravely wounded in 2011 in a murderous attack by a madman that left six dead and thirteen injured. Since then, Giffords has made a remarkable recovery; unfortunately, it apparently has not been enough of a recovery, so she’s resigning in order to concentrate on her health. The video below of the announcement both shows the extent of her injuries, and the impressive extent to which she’s already surmounted them: I don’t know if Congresswoman Giffords will ever heal fully, but she’s already doing much better than I privately expected.

More here (via Hot Air Headlines): as this is a House seat, the Governor of Arizona will schedule a special election for the remainder of Giffords’ term. Obviously, our best wishes and prayers for Congresswoman Giffords’ continued recovery.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

As mentioned earlier, I was kind of taking last night off, so this will be a little scatter-shot.  Anyway:

• Heh.  Called it.  Not that getting the order was all that hard, or even unsurprising; also note that I didn’t predict the percentages.  By the way:  the end results (Gingrich 40%, Romney 28%, Santorum 17%, Paul 13%) were pretty close to what PPP predicted (Gingrich 37%, Romney 28%, Santorum 16%, Paul 14%).
• Sean Trende over at RCP has done a pretty good job explaining just how bad this night was for Mitt Romney.
• I predict that we’ve heard the last of any suggestion, by the way, that Romney will skipping most or all of the remaining debates.
• Most importantly: none of this suggests that Newt Gingrich is now the inevitable nominee.  Just that Romney isn’t actually inevitable.  But it’s going to be one of those two.
• Florida is going to be epic next week.  Nine days of (metaphorical) knife fights in alleys, because there’s some people out there who are scared for the first time in this campaign cycle.  Hope everyone else is prepared for that, because it’s going to happen anyway.
• Looking further at the schedule… Nevada, Arizona, and Michigan’s caucuses/primaries look like the results will be binding; Maine, Colorado, and Minnesota’s technically will not. Don’t expect that to be reported in the media.
• If Romney doesn’t start winning primaries, the Super Tuesday narrative will have a disproportionate amount of space dedicated to the minor detail that the frontrunner is not on the ballot in Virginia. Fallout from that: if Romney wins the nomination then Bob McDonnell will not be his Vice Presidential pick.
• Last but not least: if the Gingrich campaign is wondering what to send RedState in the way of a gift basket, I personally like those chocolate praline stick things.  Although, honestly, I didn’t do the heavy lifting on this one.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

Reports are coming in (via @CFHeather) that a former Obama ’08 staffer – one Zach Edwards, formerly with the 2008 Obama campaign in Iowa and currently up until the arrest working for Link Strategies*, a company affiliated with Sen. Tom Harken (D, IA) – has been arrested for identity theft. The Iowa Department of Public Safety puts it fairly succinctly: “According to the Criminal Complaint, on June 24, 2011, Edwards fraudulently used, or attempted to use, the identity of Iowa Secretary of State Matt Schultz and/or Secretary Schultz’s brother, Thomas Schultz, with the intent to obtain a benefit, in an alleged scheme to falsely implicate Secretary Schultz in perceived illegal or unethical behavior while in office.” In other words: Edwards is accused of trying to pretend to be Schultz in order to get Schultz in trouble. The crime is listed as an ‘Aggravated Misdemeanor,’ but if convicted Edwards could face jail time.

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Quick background: the Obama administration has rejected plans for an additional pipeline to transport ethical oil from Canada to the United States, despite the fact that support for this project is bipartisan, and in fact favored by traditional Democratic allies in organized labor (who were reasonably expecting that they’d be able to get some jobs out of it).  Anyway: while reading this darkly entertaining article on how proper, blue-collar labor unions are smarting over the way that Barack Obama prefers to cater to liberal environmentalists over letting a working man, well, work, I came across this passage: “Unions and environmental groups that praised Obama issued a joint statement lauding his decision to go slow – and blaming the House GOP…” – well, no need for Democratic party agitprop, is there? Particularly when it’s as clumsy as the default Green-derived pap that we typically get these days.

Still, let’s look at the unions that support the Obama administration on Keystone, shall we? List via here:

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Details here and here: the short version is that the USSC decided that a lower court erred because it had, to quote the New York Times, “not paid enough deference to the Legislature’s choices and had improperly substituted its own values for those of elected officials.” The underlying issue is that there is an ongoing dispute over how the new Texas federal Congressional map should be drawn; Texas got four more seats in the latest round of redistricting, and the beleaguered Democratic minority in Texas has been using Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act as their excuse to tie the entire process up in legalistic knots. As primaries are, well, looming at this point, the aforementioned lower court (in San Antonio) had put together an interim map that more or less ignored the elected legislature’s wishes in this matter; and the Supreme Court just unanimously smacked them down for it.

This does not mean that the original Texas legislature’s maps will be used; that’s up to the currently Democratic-controlled Justice department, or else an ostensibly impartial three-judge tribunal in DC. What it does do is reaffirm the principle that lower courts should take into account the original wishes of the legislature in emergency situations – and with an effective deadline of February 1st, this qualifies as an emergency situation – such as these. In other words, the courts may still create interim maps (which will apply for at least the 2012 election cycle) while the final maps are being resolved; what they can not do is ignore the original wishes of the legislature, to the extent that the San Antonio court did.

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The Republican Study Committee has a new ad out pointing out how long it’s been since we had a budget:

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Yeah, normally I categorize this sort of thing as ‘cutting and running,’ but the man just fought off colon cancer. That stuff is nasty and even I have limits to my dearth of sympathy towards Democratic legislators.

Anyway… NY-22 is currently D+6, but who knows what will happen after the next redistricting? …Actually, according to Ed Koch this is a – his words, not mine – ‘godsend:’

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Just for calibration… back in April of 2009 I attended the DC Tax Day Tea Party; and one of the more interesting moments of that day was when a box was found to have been thrown over the White House fence, causing the US Secret Service to pretty much push everybody out of Lafayette Park. Never knew who threw the box (obviously, nothing in it), could have been an overenthusiastic protester, could have been a Lefty troublemaker, but hey, rules are rules.

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In general:

1. Democratic Big Labor cronies are submitting recall petitions today to force a recall election of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and Lt. Governor Rebecca Kleefisch. They claim to have enough to weather the inevitable challenges.
2. This latest exercise in partisan petulance is scheduled to cost the state of Wisconsin 9 million dollars’ worth of taxpayer money, once you factor in all the state- and municipal-level Democratic temper tantrums. And here we thought that getting Democrats out of office would stop them from wasting productive people’s money.
3. Governor Walker has already amassed a $5.1 million dollar war chest for this nonsense, and he can raise as much as he darn well pleases. There’s going to be a lot of money poured into these recall elections, by the way; money that the Democrats in particular are going to miss.
4. The Democrats don’t have a clue who to run against Walker. (via @VickiMcKenna)

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You may remember her from last week: Mia is the mayor of Saratoga Springs, Utah, and is now running for the new district created for Utah as a result of the last census.  We had the opportunity to talk about the details of the district, plus her thoughts about the best way to represent it:

Mia’s  site is here.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

Ah, the federal government.  More specifically… ah, the liberal alternate energy-supporting faction of the federal government, which has just demonstrated that they are as innocent of the ways of industrial production as they are of basic science.  The short version: fuel refiners were mandated, on penalty of fines, to use a certain percentage of an alternate fuel called “cellulosic biofuel”… which does not actually really exist.  Oh, samples of the stuff exist, which is why a Democratic-controlled Congress put the requirements into the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007*; but oddly enough it turns out that four years weren’t quite enough time to ensure that the fuel would be available in the qualities needed!

Go figure, huh?  I mean, it’s almost as if a bunch of lobbyists told a bunch of friendly politicians a bunch of optimistic twaddle that both groups wanted to hear.  I know, I know; that this sort of thing could happen in Washington DC  is downright shocking…

Via the NCPA, via @jeffemanuel.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*Hey, how did that work out for us, anyway? …Oh, right, it didn’t at all.

Andrew McCarthy of NRO puts his thumb squarely on one of the two central problems that I have with a Romney candidacy:

In 2008, Obamacare did not exist. In 2012, it vies with our astronomical national debt — to which it will prodigiously contribute — as the most crucial issue in the campaign. It is Obamacare’s trespass against the private economy and individual liberty that transformed the Tea Party into a mass movement, perhaps the most dynamic one electoral politics has seen in decades. And of all the Republican candidates, Romney is the weakest, the most compromised, when it comes to taking that fight to the president.

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Come, I will conceal nothing from you: the Ricky Gill campaign is busily bringing up the odd detail that his likely opponent for CA-09 – Rep. Jerry McNerney, who was essentially accused by ProPublica last month of having that district redrawn for his benefit – has not yet moved into CA-09.  Given that McNerney’s been putting this move off since at least last July, I think that this is a perfectly reasonable observation of the Ricky Gill campaign to make.  I understand that redistricting can make for temporary confusion and delay until things straighten out again, but at this point failing to find a new place to live in the district that you want to represents a certain lack of, ah, drive*.

As you probably recall, we interviewed Ricky last month at RedState.  Check out the interview.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*We will now pause while Democrats search frantically for any Republican legislator from the last thirty years who did not instantly relocate his or her primary residence because of redistricting.  Alas for them, it’s not really unlikely that any hypothetical GOP legislator had gone through the trouble of (allegedly) designing their district first.  In other words: shenanigans are one thing, but sloppy, ill-planned shenanigans?  That’s kind of… embarrassing, no?