But this further confirms my suspicion that President Obama’s brains are the most over-rated to occupy the Oval Office in generations. Take his recent nominations, which are a mess.

Last week’s Senate hearings on Senator Hagel’s confirmation as defense secretary were a disaster. Senator McCain pressed Senator Hagel to confirm or deny Hagel’s earlier statement that the Surge in Iraq was “the greatest foreign policy blunder since the Vietnam War.” Senator Ted Cruz pointed out that Senator Hegal, during an interview with the Al Jazeera English network in 2009 had agreed with a questioner who said that the United States appeared and acted like the world’s bully. As Paul Mirengoff at the Powerline Blog wrote, “if he were a Broadway play, Hagel would close after one performance.”

There were also a number of past anti-Semitic, or at least anti-Israel statements about which Senator Hagel was questioned. About the only thing about the hearing that was reassuring to those who take national defense seriously was that Hagel bumbled so much he sounded like he may have dementia. Let’s face it, a demented defense secretary may not be as bad as an anti-American defense secretary who is purposefully soft on defense and unconcerned about looming problems with Iran’s nuclear program.

Senator Lindsey Graham has threatened a hold on the Hagel nomination, and he should. Not only is a defense secretary an important policy position, but as has been pointed out by Republican critics that in any given foreign crisis, the defense secretary will be one of the few advisors in the room, advising the president.

Next up: a nomination battle for a Treasury secretary nominee, Jacob Lew, who has never worked in a bank except as an attorney for Citibank, and has held many different government jobs, most recently President Obama’s chief of staff. Definitely a financial industry lightweight. Lew has also been accused of misleading the public on deficits. About the only thing that stands out about Jacob Lew as Treasury secretary is the fact that his signature — which will appear on all of our currency – looks like a bunch of circles. Oddly enough, it doesn’t appear as if Lew has had any medical training.

After that, brace yourself for President Obama’s nominee for director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), Todd Jones. Jones is the current acting director of ATF and has been criticized by a local Democratic FBI office director as being politically well-connected but incompetent and soft on gun and violent crime prosecutions.

Past presidents have had difficult times in their second terms, but the difficulty is usually with big proposals. President George W. Bush unsuccessfully tried to pass privatization of Social Security and immigration reform in his second term. President Reagan spent his second term solidifying his victory in the Cold War and simplified the tax code, lowering the top marginal tax rate to 28%. Meanwhile, President Obama is trying to get Charles Hagel approved as defense secretary, Jacob Lew at Treasury secretary, and Todd Jones as ATF director, not grand plans by any means.

President Obama may get these nominees approved by a majority of senators. But the question is: why is he fighting these particular battles? He could have easily found better qualified nominees for these positions and fought bigger battles on some substantive legislative proposals. Why spend what remaining political capital he has on these problematic appointments? I have a theory, and here goes.

As liberal as he is, President Obama prefers to settle scores with his political adversaries even more than getting big liberal proposals passed. There were some clues dropped in the recent campaign. In one speech President Obama told his audience, who booed after Gov. Romney was mentioned, “don’t boo … voting is the best revenge.” This follows a slip he made a couple years earlier when he encouraged Latinos to punish their “enemies,” and when he warned African Americans that a Republican take-over of Congress would mean “hand-to-hand combat up here on Capitol Hill.”

These Freudian slips and others show the resentment that President Obama feels towards anyone who opposes him. Opposing ideas are not to be argued against; their proponents are to be personally defeated and the victory noted. Somewhere in his brain the president is keeping score, and he relishes announcing to his opponents, as he did in his first term, “I won.”

It is a pettiness that may work out well for the conservative cause. After all, the best way to block any future liberal proposals is to not have them proposed in the first place. The Hagel, Lew and Jones nominations, and the spending of President Obama’s political capital needed to advance these nominations, may be just the ticket to stall any future liberal proposals.

But the issue is not only wealthy actors and producers who call for higher taxes.  There are also wealthy academics, journalists, politicians, racial grievance hustlers, former presidents — the list goes on and on — of people who are wealthy, calling for higher taxes of wealthy people, and identifying with wealth of those whose taxes are to be raised.  The added identification with those whose taxes should be raised is a cheap, easily-virtuous element in an argument that adds credibility and virtue at the same time, thus advancing the argument.  Those of us who oppose it would correctly define this tactic as sanctimonious malarkey.

There is also an element of a bluff when a rich person calls for higher taxes on rich people like them.  A person making such a call knows that there is no way the tax code could be changed to specifically target their own individual tax rate, so it is a cheap and inexpensive feel-good proposal.  They know that their bluff will never be called.

Well I say it is high time we call their bluff.  I hereby propose the Sanctimony Tax.  This is a new tax that even Grover Norquist could support.  Or if he opposes it, he would seriously consider it for a few minutes before opposing it.

Here is how the Sanctimony Tax would work: anyone who openly calls for a higher tax rate for people in the top tax bracket, and then also identifies with the top tax bracket, will be subject to a surcharge on their current calendar year’s federal income taxes.  The specific surcharge rate could be decided on by Congress, but I would suggest an additional 10%, at the least.

One example of the Sanctimony Tax in action would be a wealthy Hollywood actor who calls for higher taxes on rich people, then holds himself out to be rich so we should take his word for it.  This rich person would see his federal tax rate go from 36% to 46%, in addition to the now-higher California state income taxes.  Or take the Princeton University professor who also has a well-paying gig writing columns for the New York Times.  If that winner of life’s lottery calls for higher taxes on the wealthy like himself, his federal tax rate would go from 36% to 46% — still not the ideal 91% tax rate Prof. Krugman wrote so longingly of a few weeks ago, but still.

The Sanctinomy Tax would not apply to people who call for taxes on rich people in the abstract.  Also, a poor or middle-income person could call for higher taxes on rich people and they would not be subject to the added tax.  It is only the wealthy person who openly calls for higher taxes on wealthy people, and then identifies themselves as a wealthy person whose taxes would go up under the proposal.  When a wealthy person suggests higher taxes on the wealthy, the phrases to watch for are “people like me,” “those in my situation,” “take it from me,” or, my favorite, “my secretary pays a higher tax rate than I do…”

That person would be subject to the Sanctimony Tax, the reason being that with their cheap sanctimony they have poisoned the public debate on the subject of taxes, so the general public should be recompensed.

There are some other features of the proposed Sanctimony Tax that will help its adoption.  Rewards could be offered for people who successfully report others who call for higher taxes on wealthy people like themselves but don’t voluntarily pay the Sanctimony Tax.  And the government could even earmark Sanctimony Tax revenue to go to children’s programs (which would allow the funds already going to children’s programs to be diverted to pay for other essential government services).  How could anyone oppose that?

And if you think this would be a violation of the taxpayer’s free-speech rights, because they will get a higher tax rate based upon the content of their speech, save your breath.  This is a tax, which attracts minimal scrutiny from the Supreme Court.  Just last summer the Supreme Court held that forcing citizens into a contract so that the contract could be regulated was not a violation of the Contracts Clause.  The Sanctimony Tax, being a tax, would receive the same pretzel logic, end-results lack of scrutiny from the Supreme Court.  Chief Justice John Roberts would want to steer the Supreme Court clear of this controversial issue, so the constitutionality of the Sanctimony Tax is in the bag!

Now that we have that settled, we need to look into enacting a corporate Hypocrisy Tax for corporations like Apple or Google, that closely align themselves with tax-raising candidates and then hide their corporate profits off-shore.  A corporate Hypocrisy Tax would also be applied to entertainment companies made up of liberals who film their movies in Canada because Canadian taxes are lower.  And that brings us back to Hollywood, which, Glenn Reynolds is right, really needs to have its taxes raised.

This is the third time in recent memory Mr. Buffett has conspicuously proposed a tax hike on various high earning tax payers.  Such proposals have made him the toast of liberal salons from Cambridge to Santa Monica, ensuring that his name is constantly invoked by liberals in tax discussions and loaning his prestige to liberals in just about any tax hike discussion.

But there is one particular tax hike on the rich that Mr. Buffett will never propose.  No one will remember this, but for about five minutes during the first Bush presidency a tax increase was straight-facedly proposed to impute a capital gains tax on appreciated but still-unsold stock.  In other words, it didn’t matter that the tax-payer still held onto his stocks without selling them, under this proposal the net increase in value of the unsold stock would still be subject to a capital gains tax.  Kind of an unrealized  capital gains tax.

This was truly a bone-headed tax idea for several reasons, and thankfully it headed to the ash-heap of bad tax ideas only a few minutes after it was seriously considered.

But this is the tax hike that Buffett will never propose.  And for good reason.  Buying and holding onto appreciating stocks is how Buffett increases his net worth.  To this day he makes relatively little in salary, which is taxable, and just about all of his wealth is in the form of appreciated, unsold stock.  If he ever sells the stock then he will have to declare a capital gain, and be subject to a capital gains tax.

You know, if this is the case, one could conclude that Warren Buffett proclaiming far and wide the virtues of raising taxes on rich people would be a little hypocritical.  Maybe even deceptive.  Buffett is in fact not one of the type of rich people — salaried rich people — on whom he seeks to raise taxes.  He makes his money on appreciated stocks, which are not part of his tax hike proposals.

There is kind of a “three-card monte” element to this.  With all the attention heaped on raising the taxes on salaried rich people, less attention will be paid on those wealthy people who, like Buffett, are sitting on millions of dollars worth of appreciated but unsold stocks.

On the other hand, out-spoken liberals are probably very enamored with Warren Buffett.  He is, after all, a billionaire and one of the richest people on Earth, and he proposes many tax hikes.  Maybe there is a deeper method to Buffett’s madness.

This could be some kind of rhetorical protection racket.  Buffett could be figuring that if he proposes all sort of other tax hikes, then he and his unrealized capital gains will be left alone by the barbarians at the gate of today’s tax debates.  Kind of cynical for my taste, but hey, if this is what he is up to, more power to him.  Stock investors will be protected, while the taxes of other Americans will go up as always.

If that is what is going on, let’s just hope this never backfires.

(Cue the music from The Shining)

I screamed and ran out of the house.  As I ran away I heard Paul Ryan make this evil-sounding laugh, just like Vincent Price at the end of the Michael Jackson song Thriller.  I still have nightmares with that laugh.

I do not think Paul Ryan realizes what he’s done to anyone, and furthermore I do not think Paul Ryan is concerned.  But I’m sure glad I made it out of that house alive and begged the employment agency for a different assignment.  I doubt that head re-attachment surgery would have been covered by my health insurance. 

–former cleaning lady at the Ryan residence.

This might look like a big joke but it is only a matter of time before a commercial like this lands in your television set.  Last Saturday, Mitt Romney picked Paul Ryan as his running mate, and until then Romney had been called an outsourcer, a prep-school bully, a dog-abuser, a felon, a serial tax cheat, a suspect in the murder of Jon-Benet Ramsey (well, OK, that was from The Onion), and now, a person responsible for the cancer death of a former steel-worker’s wife.  Clearly Mitt Romney is the lowest form of human debris ever to run for president!  Has Romney no shame at all?  Pretty soon the voters will prefer a team of Jeffrey Dahmer and Jack The Ripper over Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan.  And it is still only August!

And the fact that the attacks on Ryan will be factually untrue and misleading will not be a stumbling block for Team Obama, as it would be for normal, honest people.  Take for example the recent ad that connects Mitt Romney with the death of the wife of a laid-off steel worker.  Because Romney’s Bain Capital had laid off the steel worker, the steel worker’s family lost its health insurance and the wife died of cancer.

Right off the bat, you see that the timing is a little off.  Actually that is not true; right off the bat, the viewer is outraged that Romney would do such a despicable thing.  Then, when you cool down and think about it a while, you notice the timing is a little off.

Mitt Romney stopped managing Bain Capital in 1999.  Remember?  That is why he is a felon.  He left Bain in 1999 to run the Olympics, but his name still appeared in SEC filings for a few more months, which is a felony!  (He probably wasn’t even paying taxes at the time, the scoundrel.)

So when that steel-worker was laid off in 2001, Romney was long-gone.  But no matter.   The steel-worker’s wife died of cancer in 2006 and it was Romney’s fault.

But hang on: since the ad’s release it has been revealed that when the steel-worker was laid off in 2001 he was offered but declined health insurance at his new job.  And his wife had her own health insurance until 2003.  And the wife wasn’t even diagnosed with cancer until 2006.  Wouldn’t those facts be relevant to whether the wife’s 2006 death can be blamed on Romney?  One would think so.  The Washington Post thought so, and awarded the ad “4 Pinocchios.”

Since these and other revelations have made it to the news the Obama campaign team has been distancing itself from the Romney-cancer ad.  Obama deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter has even denied knowing anything about the steel-worker’s story even though she had hosted a conference call about it back in May.  Now Cutter’s career has been diagnosed with imminent mortality and news-watchers are on a death-watch.

Others in the media have compared the Romney-cancer-ad to the “swift-boating” that happened to John Kerry in 2004.  But I don’t remember anyone blaming John Kerry for someone’s wife dying of cancer.  I do remember John Kerry being compared to Lurch in The Addams Family, but Lurch never killed anyone, he only answered the front door and scared people who came by.

You can’t really blame the Obama campaign for trying to distract voters.  What else are they supposed to campaign on, the economy?  After almost four years under President Obama, it definitely does not look like Morning in America.

So in the 2012 campaign we can expect some over-the-top campaign ads from President Obama and his supporters.  Even Romney contributors can expect a little static coming their way.  Recently Sheldon Adelson, billionaire CEO of the Las Vegas Sands Corp. and major Republican contributor, didn’t appreciate essentially being called a pimp in a Democratic campaign pitch.  So he got an apology from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and is suing the National Jewish Democratic Council for $60 million.  Good for him!  Maybe this is what is needed.

Yes, Paul Ryan can expect all sorts of dirty ads coming his way.  What could possibly come next?

NEWS FLASH: This just in, evidence has now been uncovered that suggests Paul Ryan, allegedly only 42, was in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963, and may have been the second gunman on the Grassy Knoll.  Stay tuned for more developments.

The affidavit Issa inserted into the congressional record outlined what was known about the Fast and Furious Operation as of March 2010.  The affidavit has it all: straw purchasers of assault weapons, walk-overs to Mexico, deliveries to drug cartel thugs, termination of surveillance, everything.  Kind of like a Vince Flynn novel, except this operation was real and had an actual body count.  The Fast and Furious operation was in full bloom, and this was only March, 2010.

The date is critical because a February 4, 2011 letter from the Justice Department to Senator Grassley of the Senate Judiciary Committee stated that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) did not allow assault weapons to be sold to straw purchasers and then walked into Mexico.  In other words, the February 2011 letter stated that there was no Fast and Furious operation at all.  The letter was withdrawn by the Department in December, 2011.

As he inserted the affidavit into the congressional record last week, Issa said “The enclosed wiretap affidavit contains clear information that agents were willfully allowing known straw buyers to acquire firearms for drug cartels and failing to interdict them-in some cases even allowing them to walk to Mexico.  In particular, the affidavit explicitly describes the most controversial tactic of all: abandoning surveillance of known straw purchasers, resulting in the failure to interdict firearms,” Issa said.  “The affidavit explicitly describes the most controversial tactic of all: abandoning surveillance of known straw purchasers, resulting in the failure to interdict arms,” Issa wrote in a letter he placed in the Congressional Record, found here.   Seems Darrell Issa has no sense of humor with letters that mislead.

The internal Justice Department deliberations about that February 2011 denial were the subject of the recent contempt of Congress vote – Holder didn’t want to disclose the internal deliberations about what to do about this misleading letter, so memos and e-mails of those deliberations were withheld.  Hence the vote to hold Holder in contempt of Congress.

Adding to further suspicion to the whole operation of the Justice Department, in June 7 testimony Attorney General Eric Holder testified that Justice Department wiretap applications did not contain any details and that the applications were reviewed narrowly for probable cause, not for whether any investigatory tactics contained followed Justice Department policy.  Holder should consider withdrawing that testimony too.

As with other scandals, this one has a certain drip, drip, drip of repeated evasions and skirting of the truth.  Recall that in congressional testimony in May, 2011, Attorney General Eric Holder testified to Congress that he had first heard about the Fast and Furious scandal within the past few weeks.  Subsequent e-mails showed that Mr. Holder had been briefed on Fast and Furious almost a year earlier.

So, given the misleading February 4, 2011 letter to Senator Grassley, the false claim that he had only heard of Fast and Furious “within the past few weeks,” even Holder’s false description of wiretaps affidavits with the Justice Department, the obvious question arises:  for how long and how often has Attorney General Holder been misleading the Congress about Fast and Furious?

You would think that, with the marvels of modern technology, someone would at least try to fake a video of some tea partiers yelling the n-word, but there have been no takers.

This was the event that put Andrew Breitbart on the map for me and probably for many conservatives.  If ever a media outlet repeated the charge made by Lewis and Cleaver, a fair follow-up question would be whether the charge was ever confirmed, and why the $100,000 Breitbart reward was never collected.

Even without such a question, the nagging suspicion remained in the minds of all news consumers.  After all, is the reporting of the news really reporting the objective facts as they really happened, or is it just a series of accusations of one group on another?  A $100,000 reward to confirm a media narrative that went uncollected is a big stain on the credibility of any media outlet that reported this charge as fact.

Anyway, in recent online debates I have had with liberals, I have heard that you cannot compare the deficits under Presidents Bush and Obama because President Bush did not include the costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars in his deficits, whereas President Obama did.  President Obama does the stand-up thing and includes expenditures where they really belong, so it is unfair to compare the deficits under the two presidents.  Liberals have explained this to me several times.

While I don’t claim to be an expert on government spending, I have written a couple of columns that required a cursory research of Congressional Budget Office reports, and this argument sounds a little strange to me.  You would think there would be a footnote next to the relevant deficit numbers, explaining that these numbers are not really apples-to-apples comparisons.  A footnote like this: “oh, by the way, these deficit numbers between 2003 and 2011 are not really fair comparisons.  The costs of the Iraqi and Afghanistan wars have been omitted from the 2003 – 2009 figures, but have been added to the figures since 2009.”  Something like that.  But I haven’t been able to find such a footnote.

So, in the spirit of Andrew Breitbart, I am hereby offering a reward, and keep I mind that I do not have the amount of money that the late Mr. Breitbart had: if anyone can show to me that magic footnote that explains that the deficit numbers of Presidents Obama and Bush are not direct comparisons because of their treatment of war expenditures, I will give to that person my Starbucks card that still has $4.15 credit on it.

Just think of it: $4.15 for a delicious Starbucks coffee drink!  While this might not be enough to get a “Venti” sized anything at Starbucks, this will pay for a “Grandi” sized coffee or Frappuccino.  You can even wait until the holidays when Starbucks sells its pumpkin pie-flavored or peppermint coffee drinks.  How cool is that?

So get to work!  Go to cbo.gov, treasurydirect.gov, or whitehouse.gov/omb and find a report that will show that the annual deficits listed under Bush and Obama really are apples-to-oranges comparisons because of war expenditures.  Show me the footnote, and the Starbucks card is yours.

Not that I blame liberals for trying to fudge the issue.  The deficits under President Obama have truly been nightmarish.  While many of us conservatives were disappointed that President Bush’s annual deficits averaged $251 billion per year during the eight years of his presidency, President Obama finished his first year as president with a 2009 deficit of $1.4 trillion.  And sure, fiscal year 2009 overlapped both presidencies.

But what about the years 2010 and 2011?  Free from the sinister influence of President Bush, surely the annual deficits under President Obama for those years would be less horrifying.  But not so: 2010’s deficit was $1.3 trillion, and 2011’s deficit was another $1.3 trillion.  A recent CBO study even projected that the deficit for 2012 looks to be another $1.2 trillion.  The United States now has a total debt of $15.7 trillion, making President Obama the most debt-inducing president of all.

With deficits like these, the interest part of our annual spending is going higher and higher, and the CBO projects that by 2020, interest from prior debts will make up 11% of our annual spending.  Gee, you would think that as that interest amount gets higher, our country would be headed to bankruptcy or something.

It is not as far-fetched as it sounds.

In only a few months Obamacare will kick in, and many doctors nationwide will be out of work.  So why not have the TSA hire them to conduct breast exams on women and prostate exams on men before they board their flights?  The traveler will not only be checked for weapons but will also be given a clean bill of health for breast, prostate, or other types of cancer.

And let’s have a reality check here: it is only a matter of time before terrorists will begin to smuggle explosives up their rear-ends, so body-cavity searches will someday be required in order to board a plane.  Why not have a group of professionally-trained doctors on hand, not only ready to search for weapons but also for pre-cancerous polyps in the large intestine while they are at it?

And having body-cavity searches before boarding an airplane will probably weed out 99.9% of all terrorists, so just by virtue of having such exams we will end terrorism on airplanes as we know it.

Of course, such searches will keep most non-terrorists from flying too.  But what is wrong with that?  Airplanes are too crowded anyway.  Remember those nice, un-crowded airplane flights before airplanes were de-regulated in the 1970’s?  This will be a way to return to those days.

And have you seen the searches that are already being done at the TSA security checkpoints nowadays?  Do a Google search for “TSA” and then press the images tab, and you can see all sorts of invasive, kinky searches being done on the most harmless-looking people.  For example, I just saw a slightly-overweight, balding white guy getting his genitals searched, and the TSA guy wearing latex gloves turned his palms to the outside, to pretend that he was not directly touching the guy’s crotch.  Right!  Why not just hire doctors to do this search and let them directly touch the genitals, and give the traveler a testicular check-up while they are at it?  That would be a win-win situation: safer travel and more regular testicular cancer screening!

Or how about that woman with her arms held out by her side, getting a full-frontal fondling of her breasts by the TSA agent?  What is the difference between what she is experiencing versus a regular breast cancer screening exam?  Not much.  Except the woman in the Google image went on to her flight and had no idea if her breasts contained the beginnings of breast cancer.  With specially-trained doctors and nurses at the checkpoint, checking not only for weapons but also for cancerous lumps in women’s breasts, at least the women traveler will go to her flight knowing whether she needs a follow-up mammogram or is good for another year without needing another breast exam, all courtesy of the TSA.

And someday those follow-up exams can be located right next to the security check-point area!  After the initial encounter with the TSA, mammograms and pap smears can be offered nearby, so that these follow-up tests can be conducted and still give the traveler time to make her flight.

Another advantage to doing bodily exams at security checkpoints is the fact that no one will claim they are being profiled.  Let’s face it: since 9/11 the passengers who look the most like Mohamed Atta and the rest are the ones who are most likely to be left alone by the TSA.  But a new TSA security search coupled with, for example, a prostate exam, would be a medical procedure that would not only find weapons but would also find out if that traveler needed to have a follow-up cancer screening.  Now, anyone looking like Mohamed Atta might complain if they have been left out of the security screening!

OK, that might be a little far-fetched, I admit it.  But from the stand-point of the doctor-guard, withholding a security check/prostate exam and waving through someone is not letting that traveler out of a hassle, it is withholding from the traveler a benefit.  So the doctor-guards will not even want to wave through any politically-correct class of people like Muslims, because skipping the security check would deny them a benefit.  Why would any fair-minded person want to withhold from Muslims a benefit that everyone else is receiving?  That wouldn’t be fair, and in fact would be discriminatory!  Quick — somebody give CAIR a call!

Yes, folks, this could be the way of the future.  We better get used to seeing less agents in brown shirts and more doctors and nurses in white coats nearby our airport security checkpoints.  It is good for security, good for our health, good for our national healthcare costs, heck, it’s even good for the Susan G. Komen Foundation because it can de-fund Planned Parenthood again.  Safer skies, safer breasts, safer prostates, safer colons.  It is the TSA of the future!

During the time he has been a senator, Rubio has already accomplished a strong conservative voting record.  As a Tea Party activist, he has followed through with pledges to oppose all tax hikes and he voted in favor of the Ryan Budget to restrain entitlement spending.  He has called for repeal of Obamacare and abolition of capital gains and estate taxes, and he has also called for a flat-rate federal tax.

And take your pick on all other conservative issues, and Rubio is on board for all of them: national security, abortion, vouchers and charter schools, gun rights, streamlining regulatory burdens on businesses, and opening up drilling for oil here in the U.S.  There are more positions, but you get the point.  Rubio is a solid conservative who would be a great fit with any candidate at the top of the GOP ticket.

But it is not only his stands on the issues that call for a draft-Rubio movement for vice president.  It is Rubio’s full-throated defense of American conservative values and free-market capitalism that appeal to conservatives.  During the four debates he had in his 2010 race for Florida’s Senate seat, Rubio truly stood out.  He even spent some time criticizing the moderator, which was cool back in 2010 and is even cooler today.  Replaying highlights of Rubio’s Senate debates, as will inevitably happen during his campaign for vice president, will be an excellent national introduction for Rubio.

Forceful, unapologetic articulation is a new requirement for Republicans: it is not only a good track record or voting record, conservatives also demand the ability to forcefully articulate conservative principles.  Just ask Texas Governor Rick Perry.

Rubio would also be the first Hispanic candidate for high elective office.  Oh sure, we will be told, Hispanics don’t vote for ethnicity alone, but if the GOP could put a significant dent in the 67% to 31% advantage Hispanics gave Barack Obama over John McCain in 2008, the presidential race is almost over before it starts.

The only drawback Rubio might have is that he has served in the Senate for only two years before running.  But where have we heard that before?  Possibly a certain Democratic presidential candidate in 2008?

But unlike Barack Obama, who before his election to the U.S. Senate spent seven years in the Illinois State Senate setting a record for voting “present,” Marco Rubio spent nine years as a representative in the Florida House of Representatives and even served two years as Speaker of Florida’s House.

Rubio will also be an asset in recent political developments.  In many political issues, the credibility of the politician on a certain issue determines his ability to get something done.  For example, that was why Richard Nixon, the perennial cold warrior, was able to go to China.  It is also why Governor Mitt Romney, noted rich guy, will never get top marginal tax rates dropped and in fact he is not even proposing it.  In the case of Marco Rubio, his mere ethnicity gives him credibility on immigration matters, so whoever the president will be, Vice President Rubio will be able to lead the issue of securing the border against illegal immigration while instituting a functional, bipartisan guest worker program, major electoral issues this year.

Rubio can also provide needed cover on another issue: the recent pandering to “Space Coast” Floridians.  Who would have ever thought that in the current days of $15 trillion national debt, Republicans would be outdoing each other on space proposals?  I mean, really!  I guess when I called Newt Gingrich “the Apollo 13 candidate,” more references to space were probably a given, so it might be my fault.

But in this primary season the Republicans have courted every Floridian vote, including the Floridians in the so-called “Space Coast.”  Hence the recent Republican calls for more trips to space, including a permanent station on the Moon.  If this keeps up, Moon-shots for Floridians will be like ethanol subsidies for Iowans, an obligatory pander to Florida voters from each new crop of presidential candidates.  As a Floridian, Rubio can put a stop to it and call it the shameless pandering that it is.

Other names mentioned for vice president include Susana Martinez, governor or New Mexico, would be very good, especially on energy issues; and Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, who just won re-election by a landslide.  Jindal is also very good on energy issues and has recently been making a lot of news on school choice issues.  Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels has also been mentioned, and he has a great fiscal track record.  The charismatically-challenged former presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty has also been mentioned as a possible vice president.  In his recent candidacy Pawlenty showed that he stands for most of the issues Republicans favor.

Good people, but none of them is Marco Rubio.  So let’s draft Rubio for vice president and get this general election campaign started.

Something must be done.  But wait – something has already been done!  Well, in theory.  Here in California there is a law against having a car or motorcycle that has an obnoxiously-loud muffler.  For cars the limit is 95 decibels, and for late-model motorcycles the limit is 80 decibels.  And for any music blaring out of someone’s radio, if it is heard 50 feet away, then the police can give a citation. There are probably similar laws in other states (you can probably find the law in your state by checking your sate’s DMV website).

And what is a decibel?  According to everywhere I have looked, here are some typical decibel readings: normal conversation is 60 decibels, a dishwasher is 75 decibels, a train whistle is 90 decibels, a car horn or rock concert is 120 decibels, and ear-pain begins at 125 decibels.

So you would think that with these laws on the books, the problem of extra-loud cars and motorcycles would not exist, right?  Wrong.  I have been an attorney practicing law in California for over 20 years, and I have only come across one loud exhaust case.  The case involved the exhaust from a car owned by a teen kid who must have failed the personality test with flying colors.  Mr. Attitude.  The case against him was weak because while the officer used a decibel-meter, there is no indication that it was ever calibrated.

And that is the problem with loud exhaust cases.  Any time a machine is used to show the results of anything, there also has to be evidence that the machine had recently been calibrated by a certified agency with a calibration license.  This normally comes up in drunk driving cases, where a breath test machine result is reported, but only after the evidence shows that the machine was calibrated.  This is called foundational evidence.

With a decibel-meter, there is no such calibration.  A police officer can use a decibel-meter and issue all the citations he or she wants, but if the officer cannot show that the decibel-meter had been calibrated, the case will be dismissed.

As for loud music cases, I haven’t seen any, but I would bet that police officers feel uncomfortable issuing loud music citations because the law is vague.  What if an officer is 50 feet away from a car and hearing loud music, but the officer doesn’t know which car is playing the loud music?  Traffic officers like dealing with certainties, and this might cause them to give fewer tickets for loud music.

But they should.  I don’t listen to rap music voluntarily, but it seems as if all you have to do is open your car window in a traffic jam and you can hear rap music as loud as if you played it in your own car.

And have you noticed that it is never country-western music or symphony music?  Always rap, and usually with a hard base.  And sometimes you can hear the strangest sexual lyrics in the rap music in a traffic jam.

So here is what I propose: states should develop a calibration program for decibel-meters.  And if an officer doesn’t have a decibel-meter handy, they should be trained to testify that the exhaust was so loud that it caused pain (125 decibels), was louder than a car horn (110 decibels), or some other comparison.  Decibel measurements are loosely-based on informal hearing experiences anyway.

As for loud music cases, laws need to be changed to allow citations for hearing music less than 50 feet, or maybe allowing a citation if the base from someone’s music causes vibrations outside the car.  Also, traffic officers need to be trained to enforce loud music cases so that they are more comfortable with the issue.  I would argue that an extra fine should be imposed for loud music with sexual lyrics, but I know that will never pass.

Or what about a private organization to lobby states to enact tougher loud exhaust and loud music laws?  Something like “Mothers Against Loud Drivers”?  Hey, you never know if someday there will be a car playing music so loud that other drivers cannot hear a siren from an ambulance or fire truck, and an accident happens.

Or what about making some of these laws misdemeanors with jail consequences?  Or have a loud exhaust or music ticket add to a driver’s license “point count,” so that after a certain number of points, the driver could actually lose his driver’s license?

But something enforceable has to be done about all this.  Just like how drunk driving went from being an occasional annoyance to an offense that is taken seriously, loud exhaust or music driving also need to be treated seriously.  With some of these suggestions, maybe something can be done – and soon! – about this evil inflicted upon the rest of us!

OK, I feel better now.  Thanks for hearing my rant.  You can put your hands down now.