When conservatives talk like this, we’re religious zealots.  But apparently Pelosi has got herself some Jesus.

At a May 6 Catholic Community Conference on Capitol Hill, the speaker said: “They ask me all the time, ‘What is your favorite this? What is your favorite that? What is your favorite that?’ And one time, ‘What is your favorite word?’ And I said, ‘My favorite word? That is really easy. My favorite word is the Word, is the Word. And that is everything. It says it all for us. And you know the biblical reference, you know the Gospel reference of the Word.”

“And that Word,” Pelosi said, “is, we have to give voice to what that means in terms of public policy that would be in keeping with the values of the Word. The Word. Isn’t it a beautiful word when you think of it? It just covers everything. The Word.

“Fill it in with anything you want. But, of course, we know it means: ‘The Word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us.’ And that’s the great mystery of our faith. He will come again. He will come again. So, we have to make sure we’re prepared to answer in this life, or otherwise, as to how we have measured up.”

Yes, Miss Pelosi, you’re completely right that we have to make sure that we’re prepared to answer for what we’ve done in this life.  Which means you’re gonna have some splainin’ to do…

Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee are requesting that Attorney General Eric Holder appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Job-gate.

Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee have asked Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate allegations that the White House offered a job to Rep. Joe Sestak to drop out of the Pennsylvania Democratic Senate primary.

The Republicans, led by Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), ranking member of the panel, sent a letter to Holder on Wednesday, asking the Justice Department to investigate the Sestak claim and determine whether a crime was committed. House Republicans have made a similar request, and were rebuffed by Justice.

If this story continues to get legs, it will be interesting to see if there’s any fallout for Sestak in his November match-up against Pat Toomey.  The obvious loser here, if these allegations prove to be founded (and we all know that they are), should be Obama.  However, watch for the media to begin to run interference by running stories about job trading done under Republican administrations.

Stay tuned, folks.  I think this one is just getting started.

I absolutely despise our public education system.  Despise it.  It is a bottomless pit of useless spending, and our kids are none the smarter for it.  Now, we’re being told that we need to spend another $23 billion in “emergency education funding.”

Education Secretary Arne Duncan says President Obama “absolutely supports” a congressional proposal for $23 billion in emergency education spending in order to stave off teacher layoffs and cancellation of summer classes.

Duncan told CNN Wednesday that the emergency spending request is needed to head off “an education catastrophe, ” in which as many as 300-thousand teachers across the country could be laid off.

I say let them get laid off.  The reality is that school districts all over the country are spending billions and billions of dollars on things that have nothing to do with educating our children.  Note that they weren’t threatening to cut out any of those things like sports programs, dances, school plays, etc, etc.  Granted, I’m not saying that those things are bad necessarily, but they are certainly discretionary when it comes to our children’s educations.  Any private business faced with falling revenue would cut there first.  The schools always threaten to cut necessary items because this ensures that they’ll continue to get more money out of the taxpayer.

You want to fix the failing schools in this country?  Get rid of the teacher’s unions.  Congress needs to take this $23 billion “emergency” appropriation and do something more useful with it.  Like invest in duct tape for Joe Biden’s mouth.

For those of you that aren’t familiar with Peg, she is a long-time conservative activist not only in Pennsylvania, but nationally.  She ran for Governor in 1990 against Barbara Hafer in the Republican primary and garnered 46% of the vote in spite of only spending $45,000.  Most recently, she ran against Pat Toomey for the Republican nomination to replace Arlen Specter.  While she was defeated handily, she apparently intends to continue to be a force in politics.  Her latest blog posting, Definitions, is a must-read for anyone that wants to understand what is truly wrong in Washington.  The most relevant excerpt:

The traditional definition of “tax” is the mechanism by which the government is funded.  The funding may have come from the citizens, or from some other source.  But the word, “tax”, meant nothing more than a funding stream.

If you asked most citizens to define “taxation”, that is the definition they would give you.

But the government has a very different definition of taxation.  In the eyes of the government, taxes are the mechanism by which they can control the behavior of citizens.  The government uses taxes to redistribute wealth, to reward or punish the location of a business enterprise, to direct personal and commercial spending decisions, and to stimulate or curtail behavior.

This is about as concise a way to describe the current thinking in Washington on taxes.  We have allowed the tax code to become a weapon that politicians use to control us, rather than the method by which we fund core functions of government.

As Republicans, it is critical that we begin to use words like this to describe our current situation.  These are the words that are the pathway to real, fundamental changes in government.  I’m glad that Peg appears ready to remain engaged in the fight for our liberty, and I look forward to hearing more from her in the future.

Today, the House Republican Caucus launched a new effort dubbed America Speaking Out.  The premise of the effort is good.  Congress isn’t listening to the average American, and House Republicans want to give us a way to speak out and be heard.  So far, so good.

However, the genius House Republicans for some reason decided that it would be a good idea to pay for this effort with taxpayer money.  That’s right, folks.  Our “conservative” Congressmen thought it was just a-ok to waste your money on an effort that they’re going to use to listen to you.  Makes sense, doesn’t it?

It is precisely for reasons like this that the public doesn’t trust Republicans.  Further, as a conservative activist, it is a source of constant frustration to see the GOP take perfectly good ideas and botch them.  It would have been no problem whatsoever for the campaign committee to have paid for this.  They then could have used the data being collected as part of a campaign effort, avoided any legal or ethical snags, and avoided the criticism that they are wasting tax money.

This is the exact disconnect between the elected officials and the public that everyone is so sick of.  How can the GOP launch an effort to listen to the public in a manner that does nothing but display how completely deaf they are to the cries of their constituents?  From Congressman Hensarling’s announcement of this effort:

It’s time to give power back to the American people and restore these broken bonds of trust.

How is spending my money on this effort restoring the power to me?  Republicans need to understand that they’re not going to achieve long-term electoral success by employing the same old tactics.  This means a fundamental change in the way that you think, the way that you conduct business, and the way that you conduct  your campaigns.  The reality is that Congressional Republicans used taxpayer money for this effort for one reason only: because they could.

I, for one, am sick and tired of Washington politicians, Republicans and Democrats alike, thinking that it’s perfectly fine to take my money and use it for anything other than the core functions of government.  This latest effort by Republicans is an affront to everything that Americans have been protesting.

Ann Althouse points to a new study that says a large number of people are mixing various religious beliefs to come up with what is essentially their own, tailor made, religion.

Entitled “Many Americans Mix Multiple Faiths,” the report points out that many Americans are now choosing to “blend Christianity with Eastern or New Age beliefs” and that “sizable minorities of all major U.S. religious groups” said that they have had supernatural experiences, like encountering ghosts.

For the first time in 47 years of polling, the number of Americans who said that they have had a religious or mystical experience, which the question defined as a “moment of sudden religious insight or awakening,” was greater than those who said that they had not.

…

Twenty percent of Protestants and 28 percent of Catholics said they believe in reincarnation, which flies in the face of Christianity’s rapture scenario. Furthermore, about the same percentages said they believe in astrology, yoga as a spiritual practice and the idea that there is “spiritual energy” pulsing from things like “mountains, trees or crystals.” Uh-oh. Someone’s God is going to be jealous.

Surprisingly, in some cases, those who identified themselves as Christian were more likely to believe these things than those who were unaffiliated. (It should be noted that unaffiliated is not the same as nonbeliever. Many are spiritual people who simply haven’t found the right church, synagogue, mosque, coven, Ouija board club, or whatever.)

Now, whether you are a religious individual or not is irrelevant.  However, the watering down of religious belief has a pretty direct impact on the political culture.  The majority of people vote and hold political beliefs that directly stem from their religious views, their idea of the world around them and how it works.  The conservative world view is largely tied to the Christian world view.  It’s not difficult to look around see a direct link between the weakening of the Christian church (defined, I would submit, as the body of evangelical Christians to also include the Catholic church) and the weakening of conservatism as a political movement.

Much of the disgust with the current Republican Party stems from a belief that when they did have power they did not hold true to their convictions.  I would submit that this stems from a much larger societal problem: people just don’t believe in truth anymore.  The study cited above points to this fact.  Regardless of what religious views you subscribe to, I’m hard pressed to think of any major religion that holds the belief that you can believe whatever you want to.  Christianity, in particular, teaches that you are either a Christian, or you’re in big trouble in the afterlife.  Christians are supposed to subscribe to a pretty specific view of the world around them, and there is little room for subjectivity.

The fact that so many are willing to call themselves Christians while either ignoring large portions of what traditional Christians believe or holding views entirely contrary to the tradition of their religion is proof that subjectivity is the order of the day.  There are no universal truths, there are only truths relative to individuals.  This is a pretty good summation of modern liberalism.  Truth is only as true as the person choosing to believe it.  It’s considered a very intellectual and compassionate position to take.

The problem is that it is pure nonsense.  There is truth, and there is good and evil.  There are good and bad policies.  It is only when we start to reverse this cultural shift that tells everyone that everything that they wish to do is ok, and that government exists to enable them to exercise their every whim, that we will truly begin to turn the big ship of government around.

Gregory Mankiw, writing in the New York Times, points out what most of us already believe.  It is tax cuts, not government spending, that are needed to stimulate the economy.

My Harvard colleagues Alberto Alesina and Silvia Ardagna have recently conducted a comprehensive analysis of the issue. In an October study, they looked at large changes in fiscal policy in 21 nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. They identified 91 episodes since 1970 in which policy moved to stimulate the economy. They then compared the policy interventions that succeeded — that is, those that were actually followed by robust growth — with those that failed.

The results are striking. Successful stimulus relies almost entirely on cuts in business and income taxes. Failed stimulus relies mostly on increases in government spending.

Emphasis mine.  Now this might seem like a trivial point, and just more of the same: conservatives argue for tax cuts, liberals argue for increased government spending.  That’s not exactly news.  However, I think that the larger story here is that this is indicative of the problems that President Obama is having (and will likely continue to have) with the electorate.  It is not some radical, right-wing idea that if we cut taxes people will have more money to spend.  While I have no data to support this, I would bet my paycheck that if you surveyed the majority of the American people, they would agree that government needs to cut spending and taxes now in order to stimulate the economy.

Yet Obama will have none of it.  He and his circle of elites truly believe that they are smarter and more capable than the rest of America.  They make decisions that are in direct conflict with the wishes of the American people.  Their liberal cohorts in Congress, who also believe that they are the smartest people in the room, are only too happy to go along with their President.

What we are seeing with the Tea Party movement and other grassroots efforts to oppose our massive government, is the reaction of average Americans to being governed by a big group of snobs that are proving everyday that their half-baked ideas don’t work.  Hopefully, this discontent will continue, as it is precisely this sentiment that motivated our founders to throw off the yoke of England.  No one wants to be told what to do by some intellectual who not only hasn’t ever done anything productive themselves, but who continues to prescribe solutions that are just flat out wrong.

The unpopular policies of this President and this Congress aren’t just unpopular: they’re wrong.  2010 can’t come soon enough.

Contrary to the claims by the forces seeking to fundamentally redefine the relationship that is marriage, marriage is not, in fact, a right. Society today (including many of our politicians) have begun to redefine the meaning of the word right to include any privilege that government conveys on the citizenry. That is not to say that marriage is a privilege granted to citizens. Rather, the government simply conveys certain privileges upon those that choose to enter into the relationship of marriage.

Yes, I realize that this is complicated for many to understand the nuances of this argument. However, this is at the core of the debate about marriage. For example, two twelve year olds could enter into a relationship that they choose to call marriage, but they would receive no privileges from the government. I could “marry” my dog in some convoluted ceremony for which I found instructions somewhere on the Internet. The government, however, has not seen fit to extend any privileges to that relationship either. This is because neither of these relationships are of any value to the state.

The relationship of one man and one woman for a lifetime provides benefits to the state. This relationship is the most conducive to the rearing of children. Individuals in this relationship are, statistically, more law-abiding, more likely to pay taxes, generally make more money and generally are of much more “worth” to the state than other relationships. This is not to say that there are not homosexual couples or other couples that occasionally provide these same benefits. Conversely, there are heterosexual relationships that fail to live up to this promise, as well. However, government cannot legislate based on anomalies. Government instead provides privileges to that relationship that is the most likely to provide privileges to society as a whole.

This is what the debate is really about. Given that marriage, as it is traditionally defined, holds the greatest potential for benefiting society, it is the only relationship that government chooses to extend this set of privileges to. Should homosexual couples, or any other individuals engaging in some other relationship, wish to have these privileges, it is certainly within their right to lobby to have those individual privileges granted to them. However, to argue that the makeup of those relationships provides the same benefit society as heterosexual marriage and therefore should receive all of these privileges all at once is where a line is crossed.

To acquiesce to those that would seek to redefine not only the relationship that is marriage but also the meaning of the word “right” is to ignore the scientific and other research that proves that marriage is a benefit to society, therefore degrading the relationship entirely. The risk is that of capitulating to the moral relativists that would have us believe that all individuals, and therefore all relationships, are of equal value and benefit to society. This, my friends, is the slippery slope that we are traversing.

Once the media gets a hold of someone, they just won’t let go.  Now it’s more demonization of the banks.

SANTA CLARA, Calif. (AP) – Banks collecting billions of dollars in federal bailout money sought government permission to bring thousands of foreign workers to the U.S. for high-paying jobs, according to an Associated Press review of visa applications.

The dozen banks receiving the biggest rescue packages, totaling more than $150 billion, requested visas for more than 21,800 foreign workers over the past six years for positions that included senior vice presidents, corporate lawyers, junior investment analysts and human resources specialists. The average annual salary for those jobs was $90,721, nearly twice the median income for all American households.

The figures are significant because they show that the bailed-out banks, being kept afloat with U.S. taxpayer money, actively sought to hire foreign workers instead of American workers. As the economic collapse worsened last year – with huge numbers of bank employees laid off – the numbers of visas sought by the dozen banks in AP’s analysis increased by nearly one-third, from 3,258 in fiscal 2007 to 4,163 in fiscal 2008.

Who cares if the banks are seeking foreign workers?  Shouldn’t the American taxpayers, who are bailing out the banks, want banks to use that money in the most frugal manner and to generate the highest return?

The question to ask is why banks would seek foreign labor, and the answer is simple: it’s cheaper.  Now, we can respond to this in one of two ways:

1. Scream, whine and yell about how awful it is that American companies are using American tax dollars to employ foreign workers.  The banks will most likely bow to substantial public pressure and give up this hiring practice employ American workers.  The net effect of this, however, is that the banks will be paying more money for that labor and realizing a lower return on investment, meaning they’ll make less money.  This is the opposite of the desired effect.
2. We can take a look at why labor is so much cheaper overseas and actually try to do something about.  Lessening regulation, lowering the minimum wage, repealing prevailing wage laws in the states that still have them would all be a good start.  Oh, yeah, and we could fix our failing education system while we’re at it.

As a side note, I shouldn’t have to point out to anyone what a revealing case of media bias this paragraph is (emphasis mine):

The figures are significant because they show that the bailed-out banks, being kept afloat with U.S. taxpayer money, actively sought to hire foreign workers instead of American workers. As the economic collapse worsened last year – with huge numbers of bank employees laid off – the numbers of visas sought by the dozen banks in AP’s analysis increased by nearly one-third, from 3,258 in fiscal 2007 to 4,163 in fiscal 2008.

If you have to tell the readers of your news story why your news story is significant, you’re doing it wrong.

Ramesh Ponnuru, writing in Time, does a pretty good job of assessing the current state of the Republican Party.

Republicans are feuding in the wake of the November election. But they are not descending into civil war. That would be too tidy. What is unfolding instead is an overlapping series of Republican civil wars, each with its own theme.

Ponnuru then goes on to explain the various positions being taken up by the different “factions” of the party and comes to the conclusion that we need to begin basically updating our message and our ideas to meet the times. While this idea has some merit, I think that it misses the larger point of why Republicans lost.

As Ponnuru points out, the electorate rejected both pro-choice and pro-life candidates. They rejected Republicans that were guilty of big spending and those that were more frugal and responsible. They rejected Republicans of all stripes on all issues. Basically, they rejected Republicans in general.

What would cause the electorate to so roundly reject the entire party, regardless of beliefs, convictions or voting records? Trust. It’s not the Republican message that was rejected or the Republican ideals. What was rejected was a party that said one thing and did something quite different. The belief that Republicans no longer really stand for anything is what led to widespread defeat at the polls. Obama and the Democrats at least represented a known enemy, whereas Republicans have become an unknown.

In order to start winning elections again, Republicans must start to hold true to their values. Party faithful should be ridding themselves of politicians that say one thing and do the opposite, replacing them with candidates of principle. This is the path to victory for the party. You can’t simply “rebrand” a bunch of tarnished politicians and hope that this time the voters believe them that they’re for real. You have to get rid of the problem.

The problem, folks, are the Republican politicians that have held power for so long.

I don’t know what the rules are for doing this, but this is crossposted here.

The post-mortem on the 2008 elections has been fast and furious, revolving largely around what the future holds for the GOP. The Republicans, it seems, are doomed to spend some time in the wilderness. I, for one, think that this is a good thing. Bill Kristol assesses the situation from the perspective of the Republican Governor’s Association meeting:

One pillar of any Republican comeback will surely be successful practical governance at the state level. The Republican revival of the early and mid-1990s–after the across-the-board defeat of 1992, when the first Bush administration was booted out with 38 percent of the vote–was due in part to the examples of effective state governance by Tommy Thompson in Wisconsin and John Engler in Michigan, to say nothing of Rudy Giuliani’s efforts in New York City. Then a governor, George W. Bush, retook the White House in 2000.

And, after the previous Democratic takeover of the White House, in 1976, it was a former governor, Ronald Reagan, who led the comeback and took the presidency. So history suggests that statehouses are where a lot of the GOP action will be over the next four years.

Kristol, as they say, hit the nail on the head. The 2008 defeats open the door for a new generation of conservative Republican governance, and this must occur at the state level first and foremost. Governors and state legislators must stand on principle and find innovative, free-market solutions to problems, setting an example for their counterparts on the national level to follow. This will not only breed an entirely new caliber of candidate for national politics, but will also begin to move policy discussions in a more conservative direction.

Other than massive electoral defeat, what event could have possibly stopped the GOP from careening off of the cliff of Socialism. As long as Republicans were winning elections acting as Democrats-lite, they would continue on that same path. Losing now opens the door for true conservative governance and a rejection of tactic of adopting the Democrat’s policies in a lesser fashion in order to appease some chunk of the electorate.

Were Republicans rejected because they were too conservative? No, the rejection of Republicans at the polls was because they could not be trusted anymore. It’s time for the next generation of Republican leadership to restore the people’s trust that we really are the party of fiscal restraint and small government solutions. Have it, Governors.

“Clean and quick”

Are you scared? You should be.

For the government to do anything “clean and quick” should send a shudder down the spine of every conservative in the country…especially when that something has the potention to cost the taxpayer $700 billion and involves what is essentially the federal government commandeering the entire mortgage industry.

The bailout of the lending industry violates essentially every conservative principle that we should be holding dear. It is certainly not something that should be done quickly.

Bill Whittle’s latest at National Review Online should be required reading for everyone. The problem, my friends, is not them…it’s us. Our apathy, our lack of will, our inability to comprehend the threat that we face. The proposed bailout should shock no one…it is the direction that we’ve been heading for decades. The common man is frightened and feels that there is no turning back from the path of Socialism that we’ve been on for so long. Therefore, it makes perfect sense to have the government bailing out private industry from it’s own failures.

More and a money quote from Whittle below the fold.

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Alan Greenspan says we can’t afford McCain’s cuts without a commensurate reduction in spending.

Alan Greenspan says the country can’t afford tax cuts of the magnitude proposed by Republican presidential contender John McCain — at least not without a corresponding reduction in government spending.

“Unless we cut spending, no,” the former Federal Reserve chairman said Friday when asked McCain’s proposed tax cuts, pegged in some estimates at $3.3 trillion.

“I’m not in favor of financing tax cuts with borrowed money,” Greenspan said during an interview with Bloomberg Television. “I always have tied tax cuts to spending.”

McCain has said that he would offset his proposed cuts — including reducing the corporate tax rate and eliminating the Alternative Minimum Tax that has plagued middle-class families — by ending congressional pork-barrel spending, unnecessary government programs and overhauling entitlement programs such as Medicare and Social Security.

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Someone should ask Obama about how he feels about this.

ISLAMIC law has been officially adopted in Britain, with sharia courts given powers to rule on Muslim civil cases.

The government has quietly sanctioned the powers for sharia judges to rule on cases ranging from divorce and financial disputes to those involving domestic violence.

Rulings issued by a network of five sharia courts are enforceable with the full power of the judicial system, through the county courts or High Court.

Previously, the rulings of sharia courts in Britain could not be enforced, and depended on voluntary compliance among Muslims.

Pay attention, people. This is a seismic shift, and one that is not that unlikely here in the U.S.

The one gigantic negative that Governor Palin brings to the table being ignored by critics of both the left and the right is the fact that she may just be too qualified to be Vice President. Here we have a mother of five, a hunter, former city council member, former mayor of a small town, and former beauty queen. Which of these you ask, makes her too qualified to be VP? Well, all of them, frankly.

To the point, Palin is, quite frankly, a real person. Palin has more in common with you and I than Biden, Obama or McCain could ever hope to have. Add to her resume the fact that one of her children has Down Syndrome and the fact that we just today learned that her 17 year old daughter is pregnant, and Palin has had real life experiences…experiences just like you and I and the rest of America face every day.

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