If you’re anything like me, until today, you probably had very little idea what the Government Printing Office is all about. And, because there are more important things in life than keeping track of every little-known governmental agency and the administration’s various political appointees, you might have missed the White House press release letting us know that President Obama just made a whole bunch of recess appointments on Wednesday.

One of those recess appointments, as it turns out, is the appointment of William Boarman, one of eight sector vice presidents with the Communications Workers of America. The President, it seems, has opted to bypass the Senate (again) and appointed Boarman to head the Government Printing Office as the Public Printer of the United States.

Another presidential appointment of another union boss to a position of power…So, what’s new? [At least, that was sort of my reaction until looking into the GPO a bit further.]

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Elections.
Have.
Consequences.

And here’s one coming up, now: the incoming House majority will be establishing a rule that will give the House Budget chair the ability to set the spending ceiling for any 2011 budget.  This rule is currently causing House Democrats to freak out like koalas deprived of their eucalyptus leaves/junkies deprived of their heroin/hipsters deprived of their iPhones, for two reasons:

• The Democrats never passed a budget in 2010, so this is going to affect spending for this fiscal year.  A lot.
• Who is going to be the House Budget chair?  Why, Rep. Paul “Embrace the sweet pain that comes from cutting entitlements” Ryan.

And when I say “freak out,” I mean freak out: the Democrats are so upset about this that they’ve lost all control of their higher brain functions and have reverted to babbling about Social Security privatization.  And unilateralism!  We haven’t heard that one in a while.

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In July of this year, leftist Feminists were openly, and proudly, rooting for an abortion to be portrayed on prime-time television. And in April of this year, leftist Feminists like Jessica Valenti of Feministing were grossly bemoaning the fact that Mtv’s show, 16 and Pregnant, did not portray any teenage girls having abortions. They wanted sixteen year old girls to have abortions. On television.  Way to be pro-woman and For The Children ™, faux feminists! By For The Children, I of course mean totally not at all for the children – unless they can be used and exploited to further an agenda, natch. You see, it’s never actually about women nor children to them; it’s always about an agenda and an ideology that treats motherhood as a yoke around a woman’s neck. Motherhood is so old school and oppressive and stuff! What with those pesky children wanting to be nurtured and loved, while providing a joy that fills one’s heart so full that it cannot be adequately put into words. Well, and wanting to, you know, live. Who do they think they are?

On Tuesday night, they got their wish. Mtv ran a special called “No Easy Decision”, in which Markai, a girl who had previously appeared on 16 and Pregnant, learned that she was pregnant again.

And she terminated the pregnancy baby’s life.

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President Reagan will be honored with the first-ever presidential themed float in the Rose Parade. This is one of the many tributes planned to celebrate the Reagan Centennial in 2011.

You can vote for Reagan to win the Viewers Choice Award and help ‘Win One More for The Gipper’, but you can only vote on New Year’s Day from 8am to 2:10pm PT.

How to vote:

1) Text “Float52″ to “50649″
(or)
2) Go online to www.tournamentofroses.com/the-rose-parade/vote/viewers-choice-award

Last night was my finest night on radio ever. This, by the way, was one of the highlights. Enjoy it.

I’ll be back on the radio tonight filling in for Herman Cain between 7pm and 10pm ET. You can listen live at http://wsbradio.com. You can call in at 1-800-WSB-TALK.

Just before the holidays, House Republican leaders released their proposed “rules” package for the next Congress. It will be considered first on January 4th by House Republicans alone, and then thereafter by the full House of Representatives. Since the House is not a continuing body (like the Senate), it must adopt a new set of rules and procedures every two years when a new Congress is sworn in. Normally, they take the existing rules and make a few house-keeping tweaks. This time Republicans are attempting to write some real checks into their rules to help limit federal spending. I finally had a chance to read through the full package of reforms, and it does some nice things. Nothing groundbreaking, but some very important reforms nonetheless. Why is any of this important? As Rep. John Dingell once said, “If I let you write substance and you let me write procedure, I’ll screw you every time.” In short, procedure dictates policy.

A lot of the public attention has focused on the requirement that all new bills include a statement that identifies the Constitutional authority permitting Congress to act in that area of law. Some have called this requirement “cosmetic,” but I don’t think that is fair. It’s true that liberals can skirt this requirement by improperly citing the general welfare clause or some other misconstrued provision of the Constitution, but this is about the only thing that Republicans could do to remind each Member of Congress of their oath to legislate within the bounds of the Constitution and to force a debate on the Constitutional merits of every bill before it can be passed. However, the strength of the package lies in its fiscal reforms and budgetary checks. Here are some of the highlights. Read more.

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(H/T Instapundit) This comment is going to haunt Ezra Klein for the rest of his career as a ‘wonk:’

…as it should, because it was an incredibly stupid thing to say - even considering that it was said on MSNBC, which means that almost nobody saw it anyway. For those without video access, Klein (in the process of sneering at the GOP’s plan to start the 112th Congress with a reading of the Constitution*) rather bravely admitted that he has a learning disability which makes it difficult for him to read English properly:

The issue with the Constitution is not that people don’t read the text and think they’re following it. The issue with the Constitution is that the text is confusing because it was written more than a hundred years ago.

At least, I assume that’s what he’s admitting. Because the alternative is to take seriously his notion that there really is something difficult to comprehend about a document so simple and straightforward that its mere existence argues strenuously against the notion that nothing well-written ever comes out of committee.

As you might have guessed, I am not taking seriously Klein’s notion.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

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…that guard us while we sleep*. I’ll summarize the WaPo’s (quite vile) op-editorial for you: the author (Colman McCarthy) still wants to keep ROTC off campus in this new, post-DADT environment because the military is made up of icky people who actually approve of the thought of going out and fighting evil.  With guns.  And who have a completely different working definition of Christianity than Colman McCarthy and the rest of his professional ‘peace activists.’  But Colman McCarthy still loves the troops! …all the way over there.  But Colman McCarthy doesn’t want them stinking up his precious university system with their guns and God and the inconvenient truth that they embody - said truth being that the only use that a professional “peace activist” has in the fight against evil is that he or she might take a bullet that might otherwise hit a worthwhile human being.

And if you think that was offensive, you should have seen what I originally wrote: it was some deliberately inflammatory (note: not ‘inaccurate’) speculation on how low a professional peace activist like Colman McCarthy would have gone to defeat Bush in 2004, or stop the liberation of Afghanistan and Iraq in the first place.  Let’s just say that the terms ’small child,’ ‘gasoline,’ and ‘matches’ were involved…

(Via RCP - also, note the difference between the old title ['ROTC Taints University Campuses'] and the new one. RCP generally doesn’t editorialize in its title choices.)

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: Whichever editor approved this Washington Post article should be ashamed of him- or herself.  I do not expect shame, but it’s long past time that we started telling these people when they’ve done something foul.

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If you are a Republican, you wear white sheets and attend midnight meetings. That is if you believe Robert Brown.

Brown is now, after the decimation of Democrats in Georgia, the highest ranking Democrat in the whole state. He serves as leader of the Democrats in the State Senate.

On a local television program in Middle Georgia, Senator Brown was asked about a series of party switchers from Democrats to Republicans. Brown responded, “I mean, what does the wife do then, put on some red sheets on the bed and say ‘You know we can get rid of the blue sheets, but keep the white one over there because we might need that one for the midnight meeting.’”

Robert Brown has a history of racially incendiary remarks, having in the past accused Republicans of “Willie Horton” politics and other supposed racist actions.

It could be that Robert Brown is unfamiliar with what typically goes on between sheets, in which case we might forgive him. But whether he’s race baiting or just that dumb, it’s hard to mount a convincing case that he should actually be the highest ranked state level Democrat in Georgia.

RedState Morning Briefing
For December 30, 2010

Go to www.RedStateMB.com to get
the Morning Briefing every morning at no charge.

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Earlier this week I mentioned a story at Safe Libraries exposing American Library Association astroturf promoting the radical Free Press agenda on Net Neutrality. Now, the ALA does not come into this debate with clean hands. The ALA has taken stands before, notably to protect terrorists from being caught by the FBI. But now they’re getting aggressive.

On the heels of this story about ALA astroturfing on Wikipedia, the ALA is attempting retaliation. They are attempting to block the Safe Libraries author from having any further access to edit Wikipedia unless his article is censored. Quoth Safe Libraries:

As a result of the publication of this blog post, apparent ALA supporters, if not ALA members or the OIF itself, have initiated action at Wikipedia that resulting in efforts to stop my editing there or to have me remove this blog post. Self-censorship, as the ALA would call it. At this moment, I have been indefinitely blocked from editing, likely in part because I have not removed this blog post.

The ALA will defend the “civil rights” of terrorists, but will silence anyone questioning the activities of the ALA. How convenient.

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