Upon reflection, however, it has become clear that it would be best for me, for the New Ledger, and for RedState, whose own mission is changing, to throw my energies fully and completely into my work at TNL. As such, this shall be my final post at RedState as a Contributor. Effective upon publication of this post, I shall resign the position I have held for nearly five years.

I wish to thank Joshua Treviño for having helped found RedState and for his vision and dedication to the site. He, along with Ben Domenech, Thomas Crown, Clayton Wagar, and Mike Krempasky, were responsible for extending an invitation to me to start writing here since the very day the site launched in July, 2004. I am most grateful to them for their kindness and graciousness. I shall be working with Ben, Clayton, Dan McLaughlin, Francis Cianfrocca, and Leon Wolf over at the New Ledger. I am sure that over time, other familiar names will join our ranks, which I look forward to.

I am confident that RedState will achieve the goals Erick Erickson has worked so hard to attain as the site’s CEO. My thanks extend to all of the fellow Contributors who honored me with their friendship, their affection, their kindness, and their support. I shall, of course, make known to them personally the depth of my gratitude, though I am certain that my small and meager efforts at eloquence shall do no justice to the value of the many gifts they have seen fit to bestow upon me in the course of our friendships. I hope, and trust that they know that even if my words of thanks seem poor and inadequate, I shall try by deed to ensure that the sentiments in my heart speak more eloquently to my appreciation than mere words ever could or will.

I thank all of the RedState community for your kind attention, readership, encouragement, constructive criticism, wit, humor, and activism. Because of your participation in the affairs of our country, what Ben Franklin said about our Republic remains true; it is symbolized by a rising, and not a setting sun. Always remember that whatever the level of cynicism that may sometimes surround politics, policy, and current events in general, civic participation is a noble and glorious thing. And civic participation matters. My life, and the life of my family has been influenced greatly and dramatically by politics–especially the politics associated with my family’s decision to emigrate to America, and my great good fortune to have been a citizen of the United States since birth.

No matter what anyone tells you, never think for a moment that politics and civic participation is irrelevant. It is not. By your enthusiasm, your skill, your intellect, your dedication, and your fervent and informed love of country, you will help strengthen and renew the American compact, and America itself. I hope to have continued interaction with as many of you as possible over at my blog, and I do hope that you will visit the New Ledger as part of your daily online reading as often as possible.

Last, but certainly not least, I thank Mark Kilmer for his friendship in life, and for his lasting inspiration, as I seek to be a better man.

Farewell and good luck to all of you.

Crawford stressed that the stimulus money is a down payment on future government investments in the Internet. “We should do a better job as a nation of making sure fast, affordable broadband is as ubiquitous as electricity, water, snail mail or any other public utility,” she said.

Of course, the use of the term “public utility” denotes nationalization:

Most of the time when I talk about the need to treat internet access like a utility, I get amused smiles.

That’s the thing we have to change — the idea that it’s unthinkable (amusing, even) that we could take this increasingly singular but private relationship of people to broadband internet access and make it a public relationship.

But end-users really don’t care whether their provider is a cable company or a telephone company — they think they’re getting the internet. They’re probably not even aware that a private company is providing internet access to them. And there are even a few people out there in the U.S., despite our best efforts, who don’t understand that these private companies have every incentive to prioritize and manipulate their way into showing us “channels” instead of the internet.

One wonders whether the Obama Administration’s penchant for nationalizing anything and everything under the sun will ever be abated.

DARPA may have created the Internet, but let’s remember that the Internet was able to thrive, grow and prosper thanks to more innovations in the private sector than one can shake a stick at. This should come as no surprise; capitalism’s and the free market’s ability to spur innovation concerning the growth and development of a particular commodity by providing financial rewards to those who do the best job of driving innovation has been well known for ages. By contrast, when it comes to government’s ability to spur growth and innovation, well, let’s let Crawford’s comment from the post linked above speak for itself:

It’s not clear that our government would even be particularly good at making fast internet access into a true public priority and resource.

I presume that this is Crawfordese for “Government would make a hash of the effort to make fast internet access into a true public priority and resource.” Despite her giveaway doubts, Crawford tells us that nationalization is necessary because a lot of services have now “become part of an enormous digital pond,” but be that as it may, government’s serial inability to drive innovation as well as the private sector does–an inability Crawford herself is forced to confess worry about–should rightfully put the kibosh on any nationalization effort.

Here’s hoping that it does. The Internet is far too important to leave in the hands of politicians and bureaucrats. I’d be remiss if I didn’t say, however, that given the Obama Administration’s nationalization fetish, I am deeply concerned that the Internet will indeed become yet another plaything for Washington to amuse itself with, and ultimately break.

I just don’t want to conduct domestic and economic policy in the United States in the same way that the French conduct domestic and economic policy in France. Neither does Veronique de Rugy:

Dan Mitchell makes these points and then offers an alternative anti-corruption plan–shrink the size of government. It’s a good plan, and it will most certainly work better than what we have tried thus far in terms of combating corruption. Take a look:

Naturally, this success worries the defenders of Big Government; so much so that while pretending not to be concerned about the effect of the tea parties, opponents of small government have gone on the warpath to make their disdain clear. It’s a curious sight to see well-educated, fairly erudite individuals veer wildly from “these tea parties don’t matter in the long run and are beneath our attention” to “HOW DARE THESE . . . THESE . . . TEABAGGERS (hahahaha, I made a funny!) EXERCISE THEIR FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHTS LIKE THIS?!?!” The effect would be hysterical if the issue weren’t so serious.

For one thing, let’s make it clear that by using epithets like “teabaggers,” those who disdain the tea parties make clear to reasonable people of reasonable sensibilities that they cannot be taken seriously as opponents and interlocutors. I mean, honestly. Name-calling? Is that the best that the likes of David Shuster and Andrew Sullivan can do? I know five-year olds who can come up with better insults, and most of them probably know better than to inject playground humor into the matter. Of course, from the standpoint of tea party organizers, few things could be better than to have one’s opponents so nakedly show their fear through lame, desperate attempts at humor. I suppose that some of us, however, keep looking for worthy debate opponents. Scratch Sullivan, Shuster, and others who substitute insults for argument off the list, though their evident concern that they are on the wrong side of a red-hot political issue nourishes the rest of us.

If we don’t have to put up with name-calling, we have to contend instead with–wait for it!–arguments that the tea parties are not wholly spontaneous grassroots developments and that their is some organizational effort behind them. Funny; as Jon Henke has mentioned, those on the port side of politics have gone from “Jesus was a community organizer” to “community organizing is astroturf!” Speaking of the great and good Mr. Henke, he nicely demolishes Paul Krugman on the matter of “astroturfing,” and points out that back in the day, quite a lot of port-side groups were involved with astroturfing grassroots organizing of their own. Was there as much consternation on the Left over “astroturfing” when International ANSWER, the Center for American Progress, and other port-side organizations coordinated and organized protests and grassroots political movements during the Bush Administration? I doubt it. Compounding their error, many of the anti-tea party set have been waxing enraged over the claim that the tea parties are organized by Fox. Given that MSNBC is behind much of the effort to gleefully popularize the “teabagging” epithet, I’m not going to lose sleep over this. After all, why beholdest thou the Fox that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the MSNBC that is in thine own eye?

To round out the . . . um . . . interesting bits of commentary we have been witness to concerning the tea parties, consider this, from Paul Begala, who tries desperately to engage in Lakoffian framing by calling April 15th “Patriots’ Day.” No, he’s not making it up. Apparently, no one told Begala that doing something that one is compelled by law to do isn’t exactly all that patriotic, just mandatory. But if Begala is right, does this mean that Tom Daschle, Tim Geithner, Charlie Rangel, Nancy Killefer, and Kathleen Sebelius are not patriotic?

Who could have known that some tea parties would inspire so much shrill commentary?

Note to readers: I blog here.

The policy failures inherent in this approach are bad enough. The political failure is that we have Republicans acting like Democrats. I thought that the past two election cycles were sufficient to show that when Republicans run as Democrats, they lose. Evidently not.

While Congress has been flaying companies for giving out bonuses while on the government dole, lawmakers have a longstanding tradition of rewarding their own employees with extra cash — also courtesy of taxpayers.

Capitol Hill bonuses in 2008 were among the highest in years, according to LegiStorm, an organization that tracks payroll data. The average House aide earned 17% more in the fourth quarter of the year, when the bonuses were paid, than in previous quarters, according to the data. That was the highest jump in the eight years LegiStorm has compiled payroll information.

Total end-of-year bonuses paid to congressional staffers are tiny compared with the $165 million recently showered on executives of American International Group Inc., which is being propped up by billions of dollars of U.S. government subsidies. But Capitol Hill bonuses provide a notable counterpoint to the populist rhetoric and sound bites emanating from Washington these past weeks.

Last year alone, more than 200 House lawmakers, both Republicans and Democrats, awarded bonuses totaling $9.1 million to more than 2,000 staff members, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of office-disbursement forms. The money comes out of taxpayer-funded office budgets, and is surplus cash that would otherwise be forfeited if not spent.

I’m amused. The Congressional accounting books look even worse than those of AIG. And yet, bonuses get paid out by the same people who wax populist at the nearest sign of a television camera and a microphone?

Just when you think that no more jokes can be told or written about Congress . . .

Consider:

Top aides say it has become customary for Mr. Obama to solicit Mr. Biden’s opinion at the end of meetings. But his views by no means always carry the day. At one January meeting to discuss the budget, Mr. Biden railed that the government was in no fiscal shape to pursue a health care overhaul this year — to the dismay of many present and others who heard about it.

The vice president later backed off, but Mr. Obama — who disagreed strongly with the view — has come to see Mr. Biden as a useful contrarian in the course of decision-making.

So much for the Vice President’s influence when it comes to health care reform.

Mr. Biden’s colleagues in the administration — and former ones in the Senate — describe him with fondness, often as “Joe,” and catalog his old-fashioned kindnesses (he sent a two-page note to the wife of Education Secretary Arne Duncan after meeting her at Mr. Duncan’s introductory news conference).

But they also acknowledge that the verbose vice president has struggled to adjust at times to working within a White House that prizes discipline.

During the fall campaign, Mr. Obama’s aides — usually David Axelrod, the media strategist, and David Plouffe, the campaign manager — spent considerable time on the phone with Mr. Biden and his staff over remarks that they had deemed unhelpful. Mr. Biden listened and saluted smartly.

“He was a good soldier,” said Senator Ted Kaufman, Democrat of Delaware, who had been Mr. Biden’s Senate chief of staff before being appointed to his old boss’s seat. “But I sat with him. That was hard, that was hard. He has all these ideas.”

So much for the Vice President’s ability to push for his ideas.

Mr. Biden has taken steps to rein himself in — or others have insisted on it. He has begun to use a teleprompter more. He often uses note cards to stay focused while presiding over meetings. He has given few interviews since Election Day, and those have focused mainly on discrete policy topics.

“He knows a lot, and he is extremely experienced,” Mrs. Clinton said of Mr. Biden, with whom she has breakfast each Tuesday. “I think sometimes he has to be a little aware he could literally educate the rest of us on an issue for a long time.”

So much for the Vice President’s ability to . . . talk.

And to complete the portrait:

When President Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. meet for their standing Friday lunch engagement, Mr. Obama always picks the cuisine — a subtle break from previous administrations in which the president and the vice president typically ordered off a menu, and a reminder, if any was needed, about who is in charge.

“The dietary bar is set by the president,” said Ron Klain, Mr. Biden’s chief of staff, who recently fielded a prelunch query from the White House kitchen about whether Mr. Biden wanted sour cream with his tacos (he did). “Biden eats anything. He’s a pretty easy guy that way.”

The fact that this is a family blog prevents me from stating explicitly what the Vice President is forced to eat, but let’s just say that his diet appears to be a core ingredient for fertilizer.

The sound you hear in the distance is Dick Cheney laughing.

Oh, and Reid engaged in more name-calling in which the facts undermine the insults–as Ed Whelan points out, it’s kind of bizarre to claim that one was fooled by John Roberts when one voted against Roberts come confirmation time. Not that I think Harry Reid is difficult to fool, of course, but in this case, Roberts did nothing to fool Reid. Reid is just fooling himself. He does that a lot.

Just as the economic news was relentlessly negative until the last few days, poll numbers for Republicans were horrific for months. So the GOP should be heartened by the first encouraging polling news it has received perhaps since Lehman Brothers defaulted in mid-September: Republicans have pulled even with Democrats on the generic congressional ballot test, according to a survey by a respected pair of firms.

In the new National Public Radio poll conducted by the Democratic polling company Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research and its Republican counterpart, Public Opinion Strategies, 42 percent of the 800 likely voters surveyed March 10 to 14 said that if the next congressional election were held today they would vote for the Republican candidate; an identical percentage of respondents said they would vote for the Democratic one. For several years, Democrats held a substantial lead on this question.

Democrats still outnumbered Republicans in terms of party identification in this poll by 6 points, 45 percent to 39 percent. Democrats also favored their own party’s congressional candidates 83 percent to 7 percent. But voters who call themselves independents gave GOP candidates the edge by 14 points, 38 percent to 24 percent. And self-identified Republicans supported their own party’s candidates 85 percent to 3 percent.

Republican pollster Glen Bolger, who worked on the survey for Public Opinion Strategies, says that this is the first time since 2004 that he has seen independents favoring Republicans on the generic ballot test. Although he concedes that poll participants agreed — by margins of 6 to 11 points — with Democrats more than Republicans on each of the issues tested, he contends that the generic question’s results are “evidence that voters, particularly independents, are worried that they overcorrected in the 2006/2008 elections combined, and now have more of a liberal slant to government than they want. They want change but with checks and balances.”

There is a lot more at the link, which ought to give cheer to Republicans as preparations are made for the 2010 midterm elections. My New Ledger colleague Brad Jackson takes a look at the political lay of the land and finds that Rasmussen too has Republicans ahead on the generic ballot. And investors love Republicans. Of course, Congress is enjoying surprisingly good poll ratings and the Gallup poll Brad is looking at still has the President enjoying strongly favorable ratings–though, it should be mentioned that many other polls have Barack Obama’s numbers falling to Earth. Bottom line: There is a lot of play in the joints, but those who believed the GOP to be as good as dead may need to eat their words.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled RedState.

This, of course, makes the Administration’s public relations efforts deeply cynical. Is it too much to hope that it gets called on its fearmongering sometime soon?

President Barack Obama’s call to raise taxes on high earners and greenhouse gas polluters met fierce opposition Tuesday from congressional Republicans and also a few Democrats. “I would never want to adversely affect anything that is charitable or good,” Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, said of Obama’s call to limit high-income taxpayers’ itemized deductions for charitable donations and mortgage interest.

When the Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee says nyet to the plan–fallen figure though Charlie Rangel is–you have to think that there are problems. (On this issue, be sure to check out Ben Domenech’s piece on what he justly calls “The War on Philanthropy.) More problems with Democratic defections are detailed here.

Other problems may stem from this passage:

. . . the Treasury secretary acknowledged that consumers could face higher electric bills because Obama would impose fees on greenhouse gas producers, including power plants that burn fossil fuels, by auctioning off carbon pollution permits. The goal is to reduce the emissions blamed for global warming while raising a projected $646 billion over 10 years.

“Now, if people don’t change how they use energy, then they will face higher costs for energy,” Geithner said.

“Nice saving account you have there. Be a shame if anything happened to it.” Effectively, the Tim Geithner is threatening people with an energy tax. Is this part of the supposed tax cut for 95% of the population?

Continuing the tradition he established back when he was Director of the Congressional Budget Office, Peter Orszag, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget has started a blog. I applaud this move if — if — it is meant to promote transparency. But while Orszag is a smart man and a formidable policy player, his blog appears to be more determined to spin than it is to enlighten.

Read it all for a discussion of Administration tax policy. For as we all know, delving deeply into tax policy is the ultimate thrill.

The joy of writing at a place like the Arena is that one has the opportunity to learn a great deal from smart and talented writers. Of course, from time to time, you get . . . well . . . people like Maggie Mahar, whose strawman arguments I sought to rebut . . . with some help, of course.

This, of course, not only means that some people will take an income hit. It also means that an important segment of the population will be less productive economically. Cumulatively, this could have a very bad effect on the economy–especially when one considers its current parlous state.

“Heck of a job,” indeed. A purposeful economic saboteur could not do a better job at undermining the economy than this Administration is doing.

Pelosi has good personal relationship with House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio). But members of her leadership cadre are starting to really dislike Cantor, despite their public pose of studied indifference. Part of the reason: Cantor is employing many of the same techniques Pelosi used so successfully to torture former House Speaker Dennis Hastert when she was the Democratic whip in 2002 and 2003.

It remains to be seen if Cantor’s power-of-“no” philosophy will work — congressional approval ratings have actually spiked on the stimulus — but he’s gotten traction by nitpicking Pelosi’s proposals and magnifying the majority’s blunders.

Sauce for the goose . . .

. . . the debate unfolding on Capitol Hill isn’t about facts. It’s about politics and the stranglehold the teachers unions have on the Democratic Party. Why else has so much time and effort gone into trying to kill off what, in the grand scheme of government spending, is a tiny program? Why wouldn’t Congress want to get the results of a carefully calibrated scientific study before pulling the plug on a program that has proved to be enormously popular? Could the real fear be that school vouchers might actually be shown to be effective in leveling the academic playing field?

The message coming out of the House Democratic Caucus is a simple one: The teachers’ unions are more important than students and their families. That’s HopeAndChange for you when it comes to education.